12.30.2008

Next Day

Right after he came down, you know, after he collapsed, like, on the floor, right there in the middle of the holiday, he started muttering, real quick, at first, and then he just kind of looked up, right here, you know, right over my shoulder, and he said, he said, something like: just find something to be afraid of and run as fast as you can, and don't ever stop running, you know, just keep running like you can't ever stop. And that was it, he let it go, and a few minutes later, or maybe a few horus later, we were all huddled together, sitting on the front porch, in the cold, in that winter cold, watching him get dragged out under a blanket. And then into the ambulance and gone down the street, like that, just like that, and this time, he wasn't prepared to come back, not from that. He couldn't come back, she said, but I don't think she was really talking to me, not that I would have confused the situation, I mean, I could guess the consequences, sort of, at least more than my little brothers and sisters could have guessed the weight of the situation, they were probably too young then and they were just wide eyed, you know, like big eyed, sitting and watching the ambulance drive on down the street. I huddled with them then, like she kind of told me to do, like she told me to do when she motioned and then walked inside and slammed the door, and we just huddled out there and I all the time thinking about what I was gonna find to get me to start running, you know, like I was a goddamn train, like getting something good to be afraid of was gonna give me an energy supply, some sort of fuel to get me on down the path and onto the street and so on. What I foolish proposition. But I just sat there anyway, thinking about that, all huddled up with my brothers and sisters and thinking this time, maybe, even after this happening right in the middle of the holiday, we'd be able to vacation as a family, you know, maybe go to the waffle house, just as a family, and sit at one of those round tables, where we could all look at each other, look at each other in the face, and I could order a large stack of pancakes and help my brother cut his sausage or something, you know, like a family, on a holiday, and perhaps, she, you know, wouldn't be so goddamn upset all the time, maybe she'd even unzip her coat and stop smoking for a spell and look at us, look at us like her kids and maybe even smile and order something like scrambled eggs and bacon. I don't know, I guess I was in that daze for a little bit until my brother asked me where they were taking him and I said, I don't know I guess they are taking him where they take all dead people and my sister then, well, she started crying because she didn't really understand and then they all started crying because I don't think they really had any idea what had just happened and soon all of them were sitting on the front porch asking me what I had meant and what death meant and when was he gonna come home and I was supposed to ba answering all these questions and looking at them and telling them, I don't know, that everything was gonna be fine, and they were gonna be fine and then it hit me, you know right then, I figured it out, I figured out what I was gonna run from. That son of a bitch had given me something to be every bit afraid of for the rest of my life and so I started running and began to really pray that I never found myself huddled up outside watching another goddamn asshole get carted away in an ambulance and me all out there exposed expecting to answer a bunch of goddamn questions.

12.11.2008

Exed

It was just the goddamn bickering, you know, the nagging, just to see if I was gonna blow up on her, just to see, you know, she was just testing me the whole time, just trying to see if I was really gonna take her down, put her in her spot and tell her, then, you know, right there, that I wasn't gonna take it like that, that I wasn't gonna sit there and let her run around me like that, make me look like some kind of fool out on the street, so I let her go, after that, you know, I just walked out, she was waiting for me to blow up, she was waiting for me to lose it and start wailing on her, oh, she could have sworn I'd do it, but I got to thinking, then, I don't know, it just wasn't what I wanted to do, not then, though I've thought, recently, that maybe I should have just let her have it, you know, just so that she'd know, all this time, that I really wouldn't let her keep the goddamn charade going on, but I didn't, I didn't do any of that, I didn't touch her, I didn't touch her at all that night, I just walked out of it, I got the hell out of there, I got out of there and I just started driving, just driving, first around and then I just got into the woods, you know its so dark out there, and I just kept driving so I ended up in the north, you know where they found me, they found me up north and said, and I can see why they'd say this because even I'd think it'd look like that, if you were gonna look at it like that, like they are going to look at it, but if you haven't done it, you know if you haven't done anything you don't think like you are guilty of anything so you act just like you act and that's what I was doing, you know, but, yeah, I was angry, you know, and I think I just started going and I got so far because I was so angry and thinking about, you know, that last instant, when I was looking at her and she was just smiling, I mean she wasn't smiling, but she was smiling, you know, she looked like she was smiling, like she was really smiling, like under all that, she was really smiling, she was really happy, and I can't, I still can't get that out of my mind, that goddamn smiling, because that is the trick and if she hadn't been smiling, or sort of smiling, I wouldn't have been so angry and I would have stopped and they wouldn't have found me way up north and came up with this story that I was guilty and that I was responsible for all this mess that happened to her, when really I was just driving and she was just smiling, that entire time, she was just smiling, and now, you know, I can't tell how to act not guilty if I am guilty and I know I acted guilty but was really not guilty, I mean do they even have guys that can look at that and understand it because I certainly can't, I mean if you look guilty and there are all these other things that make you look guilty and its what all these experts start saying is guilty, I mean I should have done it, I should have just done it, if I had known that I was going to end up in this mess looking guilty, I should have just done it and then this wouldn't be all screwed up, you know, even my lawyer is starting to close the book on this and its all because you can't know how to act when you aren't guilty, you don't know how to act as if you were guilty because if I had done it why in the heck would I drive all that way, if I was thinking, you know, I would have just gone to my uncle's and slept there and said we got in a fight and left it at that.

And I still would have looked guilty. And they still would have said you went to your uncle's and that makes you look guilty and she would still be smiling and I'd be thinking there has to be some way to go, some way to walk, where you can almost assure that you aren't guilty, at every point, you aren't guilty, no matter the circumstances. I just can't find it. And so she's smiling and I'm trying to get through this mess.

12.10.2008

Ex

I don't really know what happened, she was in mid-sentence and then, all of sudden, she stopped, stared at me, waited, you know, sort of crying, looking real mad, and I was thinking, I sure don't get mad like that, I mean I get mad, don't get me wrong, I get mad like the next guy, sure, but not like that, you know, she had her arms crossed and all, and she was raising her eye brows and I just kept thinking, ah fuck, here it comes, you know, here comes the god damn blow that is gonna knock me clear into next week, here comes the god damn bullshit that I'll be thinking about well into even next month. You see, I knew it was coming, then, I just hadn't had a clue before then, it just didn't seem like a big deal and then all of a sudden, I mean really, all of a sudden, it was this huge deal, there was no deal bigger, you know, and she was the fricking messenger, right there in front of me, and I was just gonna sit there wide eyed and take it, just like that. Worst of all, she knew it, she knew I was all those things she was yelling about all that uncaring bullshit, she knew it, she knew I was just as distant as ever, but what she didn't know is that right then, I was prepared to take it all back, I was really prepared to take all the things that I had done that were probably unfair and uncalled for, yeah, well, I was gonna say I take them all back, I didn't mean them and you won't see anymore of that, not ever again, you aren't gonna see any of that from here on out, its just gonna be you and me and I'm gonna be the one that is paying attention, you know, to all the little details, you know, the little things that are going on like looking at your shoes and stuff and saying, I think you have a really nice pair of shoes, well that is going to be me, right there at the front of the line, hell with my hand raised. Yeah, I was ready cause I could see forward then, you know. All she was really doing is crying and yelling and not really taking in the seriousness of all this and I was thinking forward, I was thinking about what was going to happen if this really blew up, I mean really blew up, it was already sort of blown up, but what was gonna happen if this, you know, went through the roof, where would I be, then? You see, I could see where I'd be and I could even see where she'd be, you know, this wasn't all about me or all about me losing her, well, it was sort of about me losing her, or just realizing that I was going to maybe lose her, you know, like a thousand days of development smacked down in a few minutes, that could happen, you know like my brain all of sudden went into its future, like on a spaceship or something and said, whoa, this is gonna be a big deal, and right then I knew it was gonna be a big deal but I couldn't even tell her, not with her standing there and yelling and all, I couldn't even let her know that, heck, it wasn't only a few minutes, not really, it was gonna be a whole lot of hours and days and weeks and the whole thing, the whole pie, she was gonna get the whole pie.

I don't know. At least I saw something in what I wanted us to be, I guess, then. No, she just shut the door and got in her car and drove off, I think to her parents house or something, so they can now all talk about what a bad person I am and how bad I treated her and they can all gang up on me and say oh he never really cared about you, oh you are better off without him, oh he was just plain bad for you. But, you know, I know that isn't really true, I know that isn't really the case. I mean, right then, with all that, I was ready when she walked out and that is gonna be a kick on her concious when she finds out, when she knows that I was ready and she wasn't willing to let me be ready.

12.07.2008

Y on X

Persistent and non-violent offenders, as suggested by frequency and onset, are categorized as incessant evaders, occupied by neither responsibility nor overt aggression yet inappropriately progressive in impetuous reaction, an insight neither welcome nor hypothesized by empirical scholars. An insight, nonetheless, that presumes to locate the future likelihood of criminality, in this case non-violent engagement, by identifying within individual characteristics, propensities, and attitude or personality trends. Neither the aforementioned category nor the inhabitants of the subsequent categories are rightly detailed in advanced theoretical constraints within offender research. The absence of such data, has, unfortunately, misrepresented the actual fact of Y upon X in cases where frequency is less than .014 (whereupon, X, an event of antisocial non-aggressive intent or completion, and Y, a situated choice of human agency, will, and even chance due to encounters and later decision processes). The evidence, therefore, likely persuades that ratios between .015 and .15 will result in heightened misguided analysis. Chance, it appears, while only partially invested in the will of human folly dictates a greater percentage of calculated offender events.

Due to the circumstances, once enlightened, Matthew hesitated before removing his pistol. The ratios do not comply, he considered, but he was well against the odds and likened himself to an actor responding to survival, or the oft labeled radical. No, no, Dr. Denaub scoffed, bank robbery is violent crime. His ratios would involve an entirely separate matrix.

12.06.2008

X

Select items may be purchased for a small fee. Noted items may not be purchased in conjunction with other noted items (unless noted items are highlighted in light color, in which case, three noted items may be purchased at one time).

(In example) Following strict surveillance research, evidence and hereby suggestions indicate users maintain usual and customary spending patterns as these are unlikely to disrupt security matrices. Purchase only those ordinary household items and grocery items that have been purchased on a daily--and if in dire circumstance, weekly--basis. Items that appear in receipts less than fifteen (15) times per calendar year, as determined by prior four (4) years of purchasing averaged, will be reviewed and possibly seized (with, of course, the possible subsequent incapacitation of purchaser). Likewise, follow all usual routine activity. Deviance from these routine activities, as witnessed in customary activity averaged over the past year, will be considered seditious.

These changes are due to the raised concern about X. Of course, pending inevitable reassignment of national health and safety advisors, all lists are subject to change. And, as the noted reflex and symptoms of X are most certainly related to 1.5y - 0.25 the board, to date, is unconvinced of its ability to completely isolate the threat. Therefore, adhere strictly to past performance in order to ensure minimal misinterpretation.

Research suggests removal of negative and suspicious elements will reduce the threat of X on Y. Increased awareness of spending patterns and routine activities will, in all likelihood, be recommended.

12.03.2008

Oh, yes, I was dismissed.

The meaninglessness adrift, and left against the pier, bang, bang. She was an enormous woman. The final analysis, perhaps determined to be the ultimate and inevitable outcome of incessant failure, listed the only options of lucrative trajectories into three categories--none of which (given the overall saddened state of his popularity) cited unknown yet aesthetically and surely spiritually relevent roles. Not even as a reference or an inspiration. The market leaders were unamusing sorts. She was the largest of them and she was a pig. They are sponges, she says. At least, I think, I am quite sure it is she who says it. Or she is quoted.

But as an aside, let us note: the authentic writer is not amused by the ill state of affairs, the unconvincing realities pursued, and the dismal betrayal of the animal, the fluid animal, or the unfettered man. There is only sincerity and dismissal and in perpetual oscillation, they do cowher, as such in dreams and in attics (though given hold of such castles in the fabrications of one tangible, one realized, one won and lost world) or fail to expose themselves to outward outlaws even formal investigations. It is an unamusing mass of exiles, amidst the only ever conforming, the only possible and passable conformists, unequipped to fathom the thought or the complexity of inadequate interaction, feeble sight, a glimpse (of ever knowing) that theirs, alas, is only the monster.

In lesson only it is their dismissal. Care kindly for the self and for the family, such holidays as those bring such joy to the desconstructionist, but only on those days is he in charity, is she in charity, for on other days, the days that do go and do not split, they are building walls that are so tall I wonder, unless she is a monster, what they might possibly want to keep inside.

It must be a monster. She is so tall and she lives in a place that is so guarded. She must be a monster. He, too, must be a monster. We should not let them out. Ha! The world in charity, again. And we would not write from dismissal.

11.17.2008

my agentic beginnings, and soon thereafter, endings

Angry, really, at first, then a general discontent and later, when I was assured of the futile nature of the entire project, of course, apathy. The unintentional rebellion, you know, the early dismissal of co-operation ended up being rather intentional, I suppose, if you assume, perhaps crudely, that there was a logical connection, if in fact there is a logical connection, I guess I sort of assumed, along that line, that eventually any outcome posted after unintentional action becomes intended retrospectivley, it would need to be intended retrospetively, the human agency, as such, would define it as such, as a point in time dictated by a course of action, a thought perhaps, of the potential, and then, in analysis, pondered adequately into fruition, a sensed and predicted fruition--you see, dear, it was a response to an earlier set of outcomes and premises instilled in your dialogue with social context, your interactions, thereby where simply placed as only you could ever place them--quite intentional, you see, it would manifest itself as quite intentional, irrevocable and unchallengeable, indeed, in my nature, I suppose, that is the claim, so it is not surprising, against my greater defense, though I fret at such dire consequences I am in no state to challenge an official decree that I am unsound, as dramatic as that appears, unsound? why I have detailed my journey quite admirably and exhaustively, to suppose that then, in one statement of guilt and another of negligence--Could I really be two things, both in guilt (a state, I presume, which demands an ownership, an intent, it must be an intent, regardless of the textual implications otherwise) and in negligence, far from intent and without clue, without a hand in any direction, no will to direct my feebleness, do you doubt that, no, do you suggest to agree with such an analysis, even I in this state here, in this paradoxical transition, am likely to witness their intended rejection, a dismissal of inadequacy, as I dared to dress-down during the evening charade, a glimpse at my history, I ask you, and you see nothing of this mockery, this labeling, this branding, yes, I fear it was as far, to place a man of such emotional depth in a place that is not existent but in contradiction, I forever, offically claimed to be, in limbo, here, without will and yet with intent and yet without knowledge of intent, how could I recall the conversion and, yes, such an event, without intent and inclusion, and then, oh, no, for then I would be without intricacy and complexity, I would be but one of them, down there, yes, far be them to be without decency, or to contemplate my now unliveable existence, indeed, it is as such, I could not, nor in any imaginably defined state, live. I have been, by the very protector of human agency, unwritten and informed of my witless action--an actor no more. Nothing here, no more, but a thing that moves that should not move and does what it could not possibly do, not by definition, not by attitude, not by behavior. But yes, it still moves. What terror! I cannot think to be such terror. Alas!

11.12.2008

the significant disorder (or possibility thereof)

At least he could pretend as if he was interested in my well being, had an investment, you know, in the ethics of the job--could come away, I mean, even after looking at me and seeing maybe what he thought I had done, I had been a part of, and maybe even after that, he could come away and say, well, this doesn't really have that much to do with me, I mean, it doesn't have anything to do with me, not really and then, that would be it, it would be resolved and settled, or whatever, but at least I'd have that confirmation, that he was at least, there, even after seeing what he did, or what he thinks he sees--because that is really the other issue, its what he thinks he sees and its all caught up in what he is seeing and then filtering back through what is actually there, which is clearly not what he thinks he ever wants to see, I know that, I see that with the blood and, when you have blood and broken milk containers and, have you seen that? No? Well, I can understand, all I am trying to say is that I can understand why he was probably not accostomed or not pleased with what he was seeing, because, well I don't want to go into too much detail, but with the blood and the milk and then the odd way that he was lying, against the stove, its hard to see that it wasn't pretty terrible, it is pretty terrible is what I mean, and yet all so common, you know, it makes it feel so common and futile, the image that he has, that he is probably trying to get rid of, and I feel bad for that, is that it is all so futile and here I come charging in on a massive attack, the good old monster that I am, and I make everything common, futile, ordinary, un-spetacular, you know, that is what it is, just common, milk and the refrigerator and a twisted arm or something, with mixing blood on the ground, yeah, its an unfortunate image to carry around, I admit that, but its quite common, and for him, at least, I don't want to excuse it, I am not trying to excuse it, no, that wouldn't be in my interest at all, but what I am trying to say, is that his process, his apparent inability to process the visual information and sort it out logically, objectively, interfered with his handling of the situation, a situation that dramatically altered the course of the investigation, an investigation, that I felt, should have been thorough, of course, exhaustive, and, well, ethical, is there a reason to fault ethics? I would say no, I would say that he could not distance himself from sensory attacks and he allowed those sensory attacks to dictate his subsequent action, which, to tell you the truth, is a little bit tragic, I mean, you know when you are a kid and you go to the musuem, huh? Yes, exactly, you see those books, at least at that point you are aware of the possibility of confusion, or at least complexity in the process of information gathering and, more importantly, in the weakness of pure sensory reliability. After all, and this is not an attempt to excuse the actions that were considered against the law, I accept that, I have accepted that, I did cross certain lines that were probably inappropriate and I did engage in behaviors that I find to be violating the ability for another to thrive, yes? Yes, I did. I admit that. I would and will happily admit that except it does not, nor cannot, preculde ethical response and I find that troubling, deeply troubling, especially for the guardians of the ethic. I'm sorry, what? Oh yeah, he was trying to eat the leftover potroast that I was saving for dinner so I stabbed him in the heart.

11.02.2008

The Handlers

The goddamn production model has finally unhinged my spirit and left me undressed, rudely positioned against the arch of my former diocese--the indoctrination of the formal code of extravagance, no, morality. Yes, the final assumption that the other man has graceful insight into the explosions of the most future, the only ever future, trajectory of my lambasted skinless heart. Ah, I don't suppose it is indolence, it is most certainly not indolence. The cave has arrived in darkness and it is the give and take, the back and forth, of the madness inscribed in my ulna, I believe, perhaps, still she shaves her legs prior to entangling me in flannel sheets. That would be sex? Sure, and far from production, from this = that. On the exchange of values, plusses, substractions, goddamn arthimetic. Our hope, our grievance, in this explosive, again, of course, environment of disease, but only mediocrity, seldom casual, is the greatest lock into prenatal distraction: we are not the beings we came to be when we were becoming our being. We became unnoticed, useless, disobeyed, we became the distraction when it was, in useless chaos, meant and managed to be our absolver, our deity into the only futile and yet useful hope: pure spirit, existence, and run. I want to, at day's end, collapse, in the fever I have embraced but it is only the sickness unto the lasting failure of postponment, of this, ever delaying the magnet of sincerity, spirit, and our hollow and yet unforgivable dismissal of our womb demands that we are frivilous and generous observers and handlers of the guided land of the human desert.

10.27.2008

the city is very busy.

1.

Gary is very ambitious. He makes note cards with definitions and he studies under his covers at night because he is supposed to be asleep. Sometimes, he can't remember the definitions because he studied so hard. I should remember them, he supposes. Mrs. Leary tells Gary he isn't studying hard enough. If you want to make it, Mrs. Leary says, you really need to work hard. I wonder what I want to make, Lilly thinks. She is standing next to Gary when Mrs. Leary is talking. I could make a castle with a moat, no, that has already been done, maybe I will make a green field with a rainbow, no, I think that has been done as well. I am going to study so hard tonight so that I can really make it, Gary decides. Gary spends all afternoon planning to study. He makes four lists: one to follow when he begins to study, one to follow after he has studied for thirty minutes and two more in case his mind begins to wander. I really can't let my mind wander tonight. Not if I want to make it. I should have five hundred definitions to memorize tonight and then I will be much closer to ready than I was before.

Mary visits the city for the first time. She has never been to the city and the city is big and busy and everywhere she goes people are in a great hurry to walk by her. People certainly don't like standing next to me for very long, Mary considers. I wonder if it is because they know that I am from the country. They can probably tell that I don't really belong here. I have never seen so many people run from me, she thinks and it makes her sad. The city is very busy she says to her mother on the telephone. Have you met lots and lots of nice people, her mother asks. No, Mary says. I don't think the people here like me very much. Everybody, even the people in the cars, speed by me all the time. Well you can come home anytime you like, Mary's mother says. We don't have anywhere to go back here and we would be glad to see you. It sure is nice to have a mother like that, Mary thinks.

Jack has been driving in circles for the past forty minutes. Jesus christ, Jack says. You'd think somebody would move their goddamn car by now--I am tired of this shit. Take it easy Jack, Lucy says. We'll find a spot. Its this goddamn city, Lucy. Everybody wants a car but nobody wants to drive it because nobody wants to lose their goddamn parking spots so all you have is a bunch of goddamn people sitting in their apartments looking down and saying, gee I sure am glad I have a parking spot. Take it easy, Jack. We'll find a spot.

2.

Those people must be really excited to get there, Lilly says. Look how fast they are moving. They must have all kinds of important things to do. I think I'll sit right here and look at the sky so that I don't get in their way. I would hate to get in their way when they were doing something so important. I think I will sit right here and look at the sky through the trees. I certainly won't be bothering them here and oh, yes, and I can see all sorts of things.

10.22.2008

Mrs. Dempsy lives with white fences in normal america

I'm too afraid to look in the yard, Mrs. Dempsy says. She is more like whispering. I think he might be there, just waiting, like all those terroists, the ones that climb into the attic and leave missiles and then the missiles explode in the middle of the night. Those aren't terroists, Mr. Riley interjects. Those don't even exist. Do you know how expensive that would be? Not to mention futile, Mrs. Johnson adds. They both laugh a little bit. Indeed, the whole room laughs a little bit. And then stops laughing because it is not funny. I still think they could come in through the window, Mrs. Dempsy mutters. It is a small window but they are such small men and they wear clothes that make them even smaller--I think some of them can even disappear when they want to. I heard that too. Everyone laughs when I say that, even the ones here laugh when I say that, but its not that funny and they'll see, they'll wake up in the middle of the night and their little arms will be all over the hallway and their homes will be on fire because they didn't listen and the little men detonated missiles in their homes while they were sleeping. Then it won't be funny. I don't think there is much funny about you, actually, Mr. Riley concedes. The only way to stop them is to build great big walls and to make big swampy ponds around the walls. You aren't suggesting building a moat around the country, Mrs. Johnson asks. I can see you are laughing at me, Mrs. Dempsy says, but its not funny, not at all and you'll see what a good idea it is, when all these people keep coming in here and blowing up our homes and our schools and, well, because that is all they want to do and that is what they care about--that is why they are alive at all, they just want us dead and me and Mr. Dempsy couldn't have that happen to us, not now anyway, not when we are so close to finishing the third floor guest room and when we have just put in new rose bushes in the front. We just can't let these people, any of these people, come in and start putting missiles in our attics. It just woudn't be right. Where have you seen these little terroist men before, Mr. Riley asks. Oh, I see stories about them all the time, they are all over the news channels on the television if you know where to look--but most of the big names in television don't like to tell you about them because they are on their side and they want you to die. So you can't watch the news that is not telling the truth. I see you still don't really believe me. But maybe if you were as afraid and angry as I am you would believe me. Maybe if you hadn't been busy traveling all over the world and working and living in neighborhoods that aren't like mine you would know what we think right here in normal america. Then maybe you wouldn't be laughing. Then you'd know just how scared you should be. And you should be really scared, because talking and getting to know all those types of people has really made you forget just how terrible they are and how they want us all dead. I mean, really, you just let yourself be manipulated and you fell into a trap. I would be laughing at you too if I wasn't so afraid to even go into my backyard. And that is not funny at all.

10.21.2008

"For the artist, I believe that there is no difference between the development of the person and the person's art. So, what I have become conscious of is really the development of makind as I now see in Adam and Eve in The Old Testament, where the timeless and the assumed everlasting first has to become obliterated, but where this also means the obliteration of the person, as a necessary condition for the individual development of the person. This obviously can become a dangerous feeling for the person and, if caught in the grip of these two extremes, a dangerous game to play. But what I've learned to respect are those moments of apparent fragmentation, no matter how bad the feelings attached to those moments may be, and what they can provide in terms of access to parts of myself that I otherwise would not have, which have always been faithfully presented to me afterwards as sufficient compensation for whatever I might have felt and motivation to continue to participate in the process. It could also be characterized as a form of dying for one's art, where there are moments where one feels really connected only to this process and disconnected to everything else, including to old comfortable relationships, which as I said must collapse on itself, in or der to reach the objective that one is trying to reach, which is the realization and the development of oneself."

10.17.2008

Fourteen Acres on Lake George

I haven't a picture worthy of the prize that I was to win, after admitting, in jest, that I was younger than the recent medical school graduate (as I believe, indeed, she must have been). She was more fit to recline into afternoon stares and regress, as an optional course, into diatribes of what appeared to be (from content of course not from behavior) only casual anger--mediated, I suppose, by the continual faculty conflict. A conflict, I was to learn ever so shortly, rooted in personal hostility and manifested only in academic pursuits:

"We do not suppose that X and Z were correct to conclude that the individual definitions of stately unrest would supercede the collective definitions of spiritual fullfillment, nor do we deign to suggest that their unreasonable analysis of interstate dependence offers any productive measure of social capital, both informally and formally."

Which, I noted, also accidently, presented itself in strict opposition to the radical position of the generalists. Their response, quite succinct:

"Yet again, G and H fail to recognize the empirical data which clearly undermines their rather crude and inadequate analyses."

I wasn't to be her younger counterpart but it seemed ultimately, if I were to succeed in anything at all, I mean really succeed, I should begin to engage in the discussion, to find a knob or a door or a small window and expand it into a room, even a building, a discipline. That was my thinking, rather ingenious yes? I thought so too, rather clever, I considered, never once uncovering the land dispute that sat at the center of the argument, a fourteen acre lake front property in upstate New York--she was aghast at the theft. But I never knew. I mean I really never knew that it was all about a summer home.

Two summer homes.

And a half century behind a curtain. I never thought I could be a patsy in a university. I mean it sounded too much like a novel and I don't even pretend to entertain narratives, not at this rate. Hmph, a half a century behind a curtain and I still can't tell how they managed to make that argument work. All for fourteen acres on Lake George.

10.16.2008

his admission

Its the same as it was before, earlier, right after the excuse she gave me, when she said she'd check up on him and then she couldn't, then she said she couldn't and he fell in his sleep, he was walking, like he does, like I told her, I must have told her a thousand times, he walks in his sleep, I said, and she said, I know, I know he walks in his sleep and I said then you have to make sure you check up on him because he's up there all alone, in that house that has too many floors and he likes, I mean he is an obstinate son of a bitch, and he likes sleeping on the top floor, he says something about being able to see the ocean but I don't think you can see the ocean, no, I've been up there you can't see the ocean not from there, but I think sometimes, when its that weather that is just right, I think sometimes you can smell it, you know that weather that comes, sometimes in the late fall and its breezy and you feel winter, I think you can smell it then and I think he is pretty sure he sees it too, but I don't know. I don't think he can see it, but he likes it all the same, and she was gonna look after him, just while I was gone, you see, I had to make this trip down south, just for a week, two weeks at the most, and she said it would be no problem, she said she knew that I had to make this trip and that I'd be out of contact for a couple weeks probably and she'd have to look after him by herself and that was fine, she said that was fine, heck, she said she'd have no problem looking after him and making sure that everything was ok and that he was doing ok and getting the exercise he needs, because he needs the exercise, the walking around, just a little bit, he needs a little bit of walking around, every once and a while, I mean nobody can stay up there in that house and not get out, not every once in a while, and she said all of that, she said it was all fine. And then I get this, I come back from the south, after only a week and a half I wasn't even gone two weeks, I thought I'd be gone two weeks and it turns out these guys down there were really interested in what I had to tell them and they didn't want to wait around for nothing, so I didn't have to stay down there that long, and I come back up here and I have a bunch of messages telling me that he's fallen down and that he's in the hospital and they think he fell pretty bad and they aren't sure, I mean they actually tell me on the message, that they aren't convinced its not foul play, that they think maybe somebody had something to do with this and they want me to come and talk to them and tell them what was going on and all I can wonder, I mean look at this, all I can wonder is where is she in all this, where is she right now, I mean I don't see her here, I haven't seen her since I got back and here he is laid up in the hospital because he's fallen pretty bad and he is pretty banged up and I kept telling her he falls in his sleep when he walks because he is always walking by those stairs. I mean he is living in a house that he really shouldn't be, I mean he probably shouldn't be living there, not really. Not in that house. But she said, yes, of course, I know, I know, I understand what he needs and I asked her, I asked her if she was sure she knew that she really had to watch him, she had to make sure he was ok, she had to make sure he wasn't walking around in his sleep and if he was walking around in his sleep she had to make sure he was ok. And here he goes and falls and look at this. I mean, really, this whole thing is just unbelievable. I can't believe she's not here. This is just unbelieveable.

10.13.2008

after the dream of my father

It is not simple. This is a world after all where the sky can be purple, where light bends the thickest tree, and car engines on the highway can sound like the ocean, or kill you on impact. I needed a resolution and found it. "So we are here to say the names of everything..."

Now I feel good enough for the words to mean something, and I spend the morning getting used to the way they feel under my feet. Did the market crash? Are the institutions going to eat me alive? At least there is time to talk like this, and maybe accidentally even say something we mean. Love is the house, history is the floorboards, you and are I are each others windows. "The mirror that is a window..."

Almost time for coffee. I will set up the computer and spend the day trying to describe a process by which numbers can represent the quality of a sound: what makes a violin different than a viola, or a trumpet. It is hard. But I will sit here for as long as I need to. Outside car sounds crash like waves from an ocean which I can remember fondly, if I want; the memory of enough cigarettes and drink to keep us awake while we tried to say the names of everything that mattered. We don't smoke now. What keeps me awake is the difficulty, the inevitable failure, the way it feels so good to try again, together.

10.09.2008

untitled

What becomes tricky is the in and out of everyday stuff. I take it for granted. Crisp autumn air, the leaves starting to let go, and me, my arms swinging at just the right rate, I mean frequency -- (not two stars for arms like Orion) -- measured in completed cycles per desired time unit, whatever is useful for you and yours, your purposes, plans, what you want to achieve and how best to do it.

I am walking with swinging arms to the general store, to pick up ice cream, and more generally, to eat something with someone I love. My mind is quiet as a library. In the library are books. The are stored in stacks on the shelves, and I run my finger along their spines, the spines of the books in my mind. I used to love this person, this is how I once talked about God, here are a few friends gone missing. I am talking about my books. Outside the leaves are falling and they cry Too Soon! Too Soon! I choose Cherry Garcia. This is the tricky part. Across the bridge the houses rise up and slope into the early evening. The future is mute, but the river talks softly. I open the dictionary and translate, slowly gathering the patience I need to carry on, not knowing but that the ice cream is good, and our bodies warm, our hearts swinging at the right frequency (I mean rate!) of beats per minute, per year, whatever you want, however you want to see it.

the hallway walker

This might all sound crazy, I mean it doesn't even mean anything, not really, not really when I'm looking at the consequences, cause I always am looking at the consequences and how things are then happening and happening again and everybody's running around, at least running around here talking about the last time things were like this, but I'm not really that surprised, I don't think I'm really all that surprised at all. It's as if the whole place, the whole construct, just started to go against itself and then it just started not to work all that well. I'm not surprised, not really. I mean, we spend the next few days, even more so, in class, and I'm listening, I'm really listening and trying to get what they are saying but I can't help but wonder, just a small part of me can't help but wonder, I mean really wonder, if there's really anything at all to what they are saying and then I'm looking at them and I start thinking, and I know this is bad, this is the kind of thing that is no good, it doesn't get anybody anywhere and it makes everybody feel like they are being sized up and spit out, and I know its bad, but I start looking at them, looking at them talking and I think maybe they don't really have any idea at all, any idea at all about the spot right outside where they are, the spot, I mean it might only be one step outside them, it might be hardly one step outside them, it could be barely a single step behind them, and I think they don't really know the step behind them and here they go talking about the classification of this theory versus the classification of that theory and I am just wondering, you know and its not fair, its not really fair, and I apologize for that, I think I have to apologize for that, upfront, right away, I need to apologize for that because its not fair, its really not fair, but I am just wondering what it is that they are trying to say, I mean after they talk and everybody's done and collecting their books and walking into the hallway and going home, I mean what is it that they were trying to talk about, trying so hard to talk about, and I can't help, and I maybe haven't got the intelligence to really question their hypotheses, I know I shouldn't do that, but I wonder if they do either and then its just the same thing all over again. The same thing again, I leave and I'm walking out into the hallway, just like them, and I'm walking down the stairs just like them, and yet they are all smiling and stuff and I'm not, I'm not really getting anything that is being said, any of the things that they are trying to do and so I just kind of fall into a little bit of a sadness, a little bit of gloom, I guess, you know I read that somewhere, once before, a little bit of gloom, or something, about a guy who didn't really think he was gloomy at all and then he realized that he was only in black and white or something, I guess maybe I'm not really gloomy because I can see the spot right behind them, its I guess the happier people who aren't really gloomy yet, not yet. They are just waiting, maybe in the stairs, thinking that it is quite nice outside even in the dark and the wind in the leaves that are still on the branches, and maybe that is quite nice and all, and I could just sit out in the dark and watch the trees and I wouldn't have to think about whether or not this theory fits into this classification or whether or not there were enough subjects in the experiment or whether or not anybody is really doing anything at all, I mean really doing anything at all because it seems to me, and I don't know if I really get it, but it seems to me that nobody is really making any choices anymore, and maybe nobody was ever making any choices, but they certainly don't seem to be making choices right now, not any of them, even those ones way up in the television screens and whatnot, and even those little guys on the street, not any of them seem to want to make choices, not anymore. And what do we have then without anybody making any choices, anybody really chosing anything anymore. We have me in there wondering what it is that they are thinking when they are talking and what it is they are thinking when they are in their home and in their bed because they sure are a lot happier than I am and I am really the gloomier one for all of this and I just wondered, I mean perhaps this is pushing the limit, but I just wondered if maybe I could get something that would help me not to be making choices and would let me just be talking about putting this theory in this classification over here and this other theory in this other classification over there because that isn't really going to make me that upset if I don't have to think about choosing, not anymore, at least.

10.06.2008

until democracy allowed the mediocre a mediocre vote

Just as opposed, on principle, to the greatest inbalance, the in and out in the early hours before the ongoing charade of press conferences and state breakfasts much like the lengthened hours of a formal church meeting, ah, I suppose he is prepared, yes, of course, without a hint of embarrassment, to embrace the foreign despot from the nation of syranki ( it is actually, unbenownst to the dearthly educated and traveled current administration, syranique). No, this wasn't inappropriate. Hmph, far be it a cultural sidestep, a one hop and two hop, across linguistic bridges, metaphors really, crude illustrations of elephants eating shit, Indian elephants, you know the other type, the only type we can suggest now with all the goddamn correctness speech. Well all that anyway, all that would intimate. Because it could have been, I mean perhaps it could have bene, a rather inappropriate relationship between shit eating elephants and the challenger, a presumed non-shit eating elephant and a man with sublime presence and skill and intelligence (god forbid, those damn assholes are in heat, the shit eaters are in shit and in shit and in shit and no, no, only ever in shit!)--the other man, he is a man of wealth, etc, etc. Yes, just as non-shit eating elephants could ever be, even the non-shit eating elephant of African descent, and not the other lesser most unappreciative type of squirrel, rodent, even a fucking donkey wouldn't suffice. I mean who eats fucking donkeys? Who trusts a goddamn donkey?

....and you know, another thing, about the turnaround, you know her turnaround, when she walks in next time, just watch her, wait for her to do it because she will do it, and when she does it, hell, you'll see what it is that she is doing, this goddamn turnaround, a twirl I think it is, yeah, well, here she comes, you know, walking out like she is about to dance, and she does this twirl, this spin, and then she looks out and she just kind of smirks....

Who trusts a goddamn shit eating elephant anyway. He is a foul, untasty, and crude elephant. No, who trusts a shit eating donkey anyway. He is a foul un-trainable and un-making-kids-able as is possible (that is actually a mule). All I can say, ultimately, without the benefits of common politics, of course with no allegiance either way:

....its just a god-damn twirl.

10.05.2008

sunday night she said that she was next

I am exhausted and there isn't much I wouldn't forgive if I could see back to where I was yesterday. There isn't much in the mind of recognition, you know, the favorable appreciated claim that I am gonna re-claim by hands on the person that I was to become, once, in the town, I was growing up in, rising up in, and then, all of them, thinking, that perhaps, once, there was going to be a moment where they'd all be with me, all of them on my shoulders and me still walking, along the road. There wasn't a time that wasn't like that, or wasn't unlike that. I think its the way it is with all of us. We are all out there, swimming around, holding each other's plans, each other's good and bad, each other's judgements, and we are walking around in each other's homes, in each other's basement--hmph, in the places that are only collections of the world out there, the stuff we have decided to bring inside and put down here, and over there. We are all walking around waiting for someone else, someone who collects the same things that we collect, that we have in our home, in our pantry and in our kitchen--waiting for them, hopefully them, to come up and say: Wow! What you have actually got in your kitchen, in your den, is really actually rather unique and it is something special and it is, I am sure (we are sure) it is nowhere else to be found and there couldn't be any place that we would rather be, there is no place that we would rather share our time and our lives than in this den that is so rare and unique and is yours and was made by yours and now, welcome to the human race.

Wouldn't that recognition be something. Wouldn't it be the exact moment that I really found out that I was joining the human race and the human race was joining me and we were merrily strolling, window shopping, sharing the great stories of the greatness that we have been a human and a special human at that. I don't know how it started, I don't know how it keeps starting, stopping and starting, and the absolutely convinced, I don't even know, I mean, do you? Do you know? You must know, you've been studying this and looking at rules of humans and other civilizations and how they interact and like each other--or in this case, maybe, don't like each other but want to like each other, or want everybody else to like them. I mean what do you think? Do you think it really is the next step, this transformation because I can't figure it out, not really at all, I don't really know what I keep in my house and I can't remember if I have a couch in the living room or if it is a few chairs. What do you think? When is it going to be the time for the first recognition and the knowledge that, hell, you don't even have an answer for any of this, do you?

I am exhausted and tired of the pretense and, even so, even in the creation, even in the examined and purposeful examination, I am tired to the innuendo and the plausible failure--if, if only, if ever, if then...If only I could remember, first and then second, the only ever moment that was only ever the only ever moment. Then I think I wouldn't need this anymore, then I think I could think without this and I wouldn't be all wrapped up in the possibility that my ambition is just a fear of looking bad. Hmph. Then I could just lean out the window, out the window of my home and I could just scream and it wouldn't be because I had anything, anything at all, in my house, and it wouldn't be because I wanted anything, anything at all in my house. It would just be because I didn't want to think that I had anything or for them to think that I had anything--and then we could both relax in each other knowing that we both were kind of mediocre and that was ok.

9.27.2008

We made oranges

Hmph, the fucking asshole put his head in the god-damn jar and I’m supposed to be fucking cordial, expose myself to the lighter side of the fucking mess. I’m supposed to watch my language in the midst of a goddamn hurricane. Goddamn disparaging. I have a monster of a time in the aftermath of the discovery that my listless attacks at the social organization matured into a credible threat of anarchy, a visually defined sense of rebellion—sedition. The claim in the afternoon, prior to the down fall, the rain that caught me into the sideways motion of my future arm: the claim that the resistance incurred debt beyond the red. I had a submarine in the bathtub and I was painting pictures of dolphins and lions in the African Serengeti, the desert, the great plains, the fantastic Great Rift Valley, the harbor of the last Magi—no, the birth place of the schooner, and the absent minded dip into multiplicity, for once, as an unrecognizable navigator, there on the promise of only the promise of the rise of the skin and the care of the muscle would arrive the futile fact of the twenty-ninth parallel, the dismal rise of the industrial man and the charitable replacement of the memory of the bizarre: and only a hint, a softened mind that the canine would reimburse the burst flame in the lower corner of the Big Dipper.

And I would walk out, once more an animal. The drawings on the sidewalk and in the bathtub were only the drawings of the world that couldn’t ever be witnessed, not unless, on occasion, it looks as if the sun is really a big orange.

We made oranges, once. Goddamn hypocrites. Fucking soft recognition that the fiercest of enemies is only the friend that reduces the paint that is the life into the blacks and whites and grays of the newspaper. The goddamn reductionist has taken the whole of this earth from us and left us without the whole of us.

9.26.2008

Plans

Rather than start all over again, it was decided that slow and deliberate action taken in carefully bound steps would permit entrance to a beautiful future. "A beautiful future," she breathed, and her eyes brightened though of course she could not see them. The woods were lovely, dark and deep. Along the way were nuts and berries, edible molds and mushrooms, some poisonous but if they took things as they came they would be fine. He had the foresight -- "Dumb luck! he said, laughing -- to bring a small mechanical device for the amplification and playback of digital signals. He had also brought headphones. So at night to reward themselves for making the fire last they chose the signals that made the speakers sound to them as if they were suddenly home to tiny musicians, in tiny bands, but playing loud enough to shake the headphones' padding. She clapped along. "I love you," he said, and now it was his turn for his eyes to shine, fast as light moves, and as the fire died darkness grew around the vibrations in the air they heard as song, come what may, one day at a time, though of course he could not see them.

9.19.2008

Dissonance

Took a vote. Dissolved the union. There were cheers, and a brassy fanfare.

"The second trumpet is a little off," I thought.

The New York Times declared it an act of "ultimate patriotism." The Wall Street Journal celebrated the future, in which any person regardless of race or gender or class can succeed with nothing more than pluck and luck: "Less a war of all against all than a perfect, open market." Still, something bothered me. I made a phone call.

"Yes, I want to know: how I am supposed to excited about the vast unbounded future when its coming is heralded by a band whose brass section is, at best, a little wonky?"

"We are sorry sir, that is our only brass section."

"Well there are many other trumpeters out there, you know, I'm sure a good number with if not perfect pitch then at least better intonation. I mean, it's not like everyone is looking to hire a good brass section these days."

"I understand, sir, but in this future, as you rightly put it, unbound and vast -- well, this future is here, sir. We are no longer bound to each other."

"So is there nothing that can be done?" I asked.

"I don't think you understand--"

"But I need these harmonic relationships--"

"We are no longer bound--"

"--was supposed to make me feel good?"

"Sir." There was a pause on the other end, and breathing.

"You can go fuck yourself, sir," I heard him say, and then a click, and the sound of the dial tone, which was, I think, a slightly flat A#.

9.15.2008

the less than (and more than) pedestrian vote

Ah, hell, the god-damn reductionists won. It is fifty-six, thirty-nine. It is not yet over. Its over, they god-damn won. And I am glad they god-damn won because it serves those assholes right. He is reddening and he orders a martini. Dry, he poses, but the server doesn't look back. They are all unconcerned, fucking unbelievable. The god-damn bastards. This martini better be good. Will you calm down, its not even over yet. Fifty-seven, forty-one? You say that isn't god-damn over. The whole thing is god-damn over. He is perching, on the edge of his seat and tapping, uncomfortably avoiding smoking. The culture has requested that he stop. Cease his activities in general shared spaces. I could fucking stop on my own time, god-damn it. Its not as if the party really expounds on values, he admits. The server returns with the martini. Little fucking olives, he thinks. This place is gonna get what it deserves too. It is filling up, slowly, the white shirt after work crowd. Vultures. God-damn reductionists. You need to take it easy. Take a break. And by the way I think they call them scientists now. Yeah, sure, it probably is fucking science now. But I'll tell you what--this isn't science. Its just stupid, no narrative no god-damn explanation just fucking useless. He is perching still, rocking back and forth, on his seat, like a child, sure, and reddening, still reddening. I didn't think irish got so red, his friend thinks. That is your problem, Carry, you never think for yourself, never walk out of the room and say, fuck you all you bunch of fucking assholes. You never think that this whole thing is just a joke, a phoney fucking joke and we're the assholes. Yeah, you and me, sitting here, drinking here, judging these other assholes, starved for articulation, lost in our own bullshit dialogue, overanalyzing the fucking market, the weak and weakening culture, the greedy assholes downtown--yeah, your problem is you don't even know it. He takes a sip of his martini--and another thing, that stupid girlfriend of yours, whats her name, Lacy, Lucy? Sally. Yeah, Sally. You got to stop bringing her around to the labor parties and prancing her in like she is some god-damn 20s dame and you just got off the fucking yaucht. Its out of control. The music comes on. It is loud. The place is filling up. People ordering drinks. More people ordering drinks. You see, I told you, the god-damn reductionists won. Look at that. One twenty-one to seventy-six. Fuck, we didn't even score any points at the end of that run. What the hell are we supposed to do? Fuck. Keep living this god-damn torn up lifestyle. Compartamentalize a little bit more. Jesus, they expect us to live in shattered motion, keep living in shattered motion. Ah, hell, what got you so steamed, we knew we were gonna fucking lose to these assholes. We always lose to these assholes and then we end up back in the office walking around some god-damn mouse maze and eating fucking cheese out of the water cooloer. You shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said what. What's got you all steamed. You shouldn't have said that about Sally. She didn't do anything to you and she's only ever been anything but nice to you. Remember that shirt she bought you, yeah the one after you had that real shitty day, all spent in the apartment? You really are a fucking asshole. Hey, I never said I wasn't an asshole but don't try to make me pity you and your sorry ass relationship. This whole fucking structure is sinking and stinking and I'm walking around in shit all day, eating shit all day, and you expect me to walk out of that sewage full of god-damn roses? Its a god-damn shitter. He finishes his martini, plays with one of the olives and looks at the room. Christ, this place is filling up with worse replicas than last year. It seems the new product of assholes out of the god-damn cloning factory, are lacking in spirit. Come on, lets get out of here and stop smelling like shit. I'll buy you dinner. God-damn fucking reductionists won again and I'm still playing the game. I should get my god-damn head checked out.

9.14.2008

Day 17

The dissonance, she frets, only supposes, demands the excuse--the permission to disolve the frontier. The beckoning, though a whimper of obsolete discharge, nonetheless restricts the cognitive reflex, makes us, ourselves, beg. It appears the evolution has consistently gone quite well, apparently eager to erase prior mishaps. The beast, itself, is active, again re-activated and there it begins, the soldier journey into madness. He accepts the fetal sanity of industry--such an unlocked cabinet. No, she disagrees, I am safe in these machines, in this travel, it is as it has always been. Hmph, I reject the callous doubter.

And the scientist? Oh, regardless. For I, I here, along the other bank, just a witness of the disease.

9.08.2008

wouldn't it be nice

but when it comes and I mean really comes then there will be no more gender or guitars warmongers or fearmongering; love has no opposite; so when it does finally arrive and the undoing is done I can leave the sword that cleaves ME from YOU and withdraw back into the infinite undivide of people and space no no no not people not space -- the undivided undividable. it has nothing to do with love though love has no opposite and is not therefore undone no no not exactly some things don't die they just change shape like a flood rushing through the hot streets turning to steam

like a flood

rushing through the hot streets

turning to steam

my poem for policy is rhyming and in ABAB

My-my: wow. Shelly, a non-activist neo-conservative mother of five (an authority on women in the workplace and in the value of economic roles), hence, pardon: ahem--she mocks her own role? Apologies, she condemns the roles of the old boys clubs--masturbation assylums. Male parts hanging off their bodies like children's art projects. Ha! Art? Children? Ha! I am a mother of the greatest esteem. I am Pro-woman in the market place. She sounds shrill. My apologies, again, she is shrill. I am Pro-woman in the economic labor system. She wants Him to know her role here is her role too. Our role over there isn't important anymore. For neither of us.

I promote only economic goals, institutions, beliefs. Unless science interferes and then I propose to introduce legislation that demands literal translations of the bible when trasmitting information across the academic hierachy--no, no, misplaced--across the academic oligarchy--no, political oligarchy--and just pure academic community (yes, readers, analysts, researchers, etc). Evidence of grace under fire from the liberal wing of Hell. Damn hell and his nazi fallen saints and his ugly hair and poorly hemmed dress and inadequate usage of the object [ELITIST]. Oh, but only ever coy and suggestive of independence. Define the value--raise Her to Him but do not change the value of what he has given prior to equality? And if the premise, that thing he stands on, is indeed made of paper does she still want to stand on it and be next to Him when the whole god-damn stage comes tumbling down--excessive, overwritten, trite? Overactor. Actor supreme.

Spurious, at best. Perhaps, inadequate? I dare not say. She is a five children mother and she is best in the in and out (aren't we all, I dare imply what you are thinking: sex and nakedness and lust and sex). Ban the books, ban the books. We are not a fan of parity but partly of God. Ah, shit, all of god.

Dear God,

How do you reverse the rules of evolution to make a dumb shit like me popular and powerful and responsible for the rising tide of the stupid as shit back-ass liberal bullshit?

I am still star-struck and a little bit in awe. But I do dearly love christmas. Oh, how I love christmas.

Your best friend,

Shelly.

P.S. I will do whatever you ask, I will, I will. I am really a very good leader.

P.P.S. Will you send Billy an IPOD for Christmas.

8.26.2008

Ha!

Amen.

1995

Dear Elie Wiesel,

Hello, Mr. Wiesel! My name is Adam Rokhsar, and I am a tenth grade student from Long Island. Recently, as part of our English curriculum, my class read your book Night. Although I had read the book before the class, I figured that I might as well read it again. As it turned out, reading the book a second time was a very good idea. The reason is rather simple. I'd like to thank you. I'd like to thank you for opening my eyes to the real world. When I first read Night, it left a lasting effect on me. However, through faults of my own, I felt pressured to read it in a rather short amount of time (don't ask why -- I'm not really sure myself).

The second time I read it, something different happened. I'm not quite sure why, possibly because I'm older now, and maybe a tiny bit wiser, but for one reason or another, the book struck something inside me. It was a nagging feeling, one which I couldn't put my finger on. It eluded me for days after completing Night.

Then, one night, while lying in that period of time between sleep and consciousness, it dawned on me. This feeling, which had been lingering this entire time, finally showed its true self. This feeling was, in fact, that somehow, someway, I had not noticed the world. I know it seems hard to believe, almost ridiculous, but it's true. I got the feeling that I was going about life in a little universe of my own creation. There, I lived, went to school, and learned everything I'd do in the real world. Except that there was one thing missing: awareness, awareness that I did exist at the center of the world, like I thought I did for sometime in my universe. In fact, in the whole grand scheme of things, who I was really didn't matter.

Now, you might think that this is a bad feeling, but there's more. I realized that I didn't matter, not because I was just no one, but because I never tried to be anyone. I never once helped the homeless or gave to charity. Not that I was a cruel person. I did my best helping friends, trying to be nice, polite, and all that other stuff your parents teach you. But, I guess what I'm trying to say is that all that "stuff" is what vanished in your ordeal. All the intangibles, the random acts of kindness, that was what really happened. And I learned from your book that if we continue to act as if only our little world is what matters, then perhaps history will repeat itself. But if we learn from your experience and the experiences of others, then something like the Holocaust won't ever happen again because people will care enough to stop it. Thank you your lesson.

Sincerely,

Adam Rokhsar

8.25.2008

Aborted Entry

In an attempt to ward off loneliness we make certain choices.

Right now the sun is setting over Manhattan.

I will go outside.

8.22.2008

Good Little Soldier

Sally writes a poem in class and it is called Waiting. I am waiting, she says. We all laugh and make fun of her and tell her she wrote a stupid poem. I am waiting, we mock. There are five of us and we are all holding hands and celebrating the birthday of our nation. We have such a great nation, Rita says. It is raining outside because of your stupid poem, Mark says. He gives Dave a high-five. Nobody high-fives anymore. The rest of the day is spent like that and then the day is over and we all go home to different homes. It is not raining anymore and Sally is walking by herself holding a flower. She is petting the flower and she is singing to herself: I like sunflowers, I like sunflowers. Such a stupid girl. Hey, Sally, you are a stupid girl. Sally doesn't say anything but I know that Mike and Dave would have given me high-fives and would have laughed too. Hey Sally, your poem sucked,I say again and I am thinking that Rita would have told me that I was a good soldier and a good addition to our group. We only have five members in our group. But we are all very close and we do everything together except the other ones live on the other side of the river with the big houses and the long driveways and I live on this side of the river with Sally and with the little short driveways and the small houses. I think it is on the wrong side of the tracks except it isn't tracks at all it is a river. I bet Dave and Mike are giving each other high-fives right now, I think. I wonder what it is like living on the other side of the river. Hey Sally, why'd you write that stupid poem. Sally is still singing and petting her flower. Stupid girl, she isn't listening to me. Hey Sally, why'd you write that poem? Leave me alone, Roger, she says. I am going home. Rita says I would make a good lookout man when they build their fort. She thinks that I have good eyes and that I could see if anybody was coming and then I could do something about it. You could throw a stick at them or chase them away. You would be a really good soldier. Mike and Dave are smiling, too, because they know I'd be a good soldier. I could do all kinds of things to protect the fort, I think. You know that is a stupid flower, Sally. Everybody thinks so. Sally stops singing and looks at me. You're such a jerk, she says and she turns to run away but I can see she is crying and I stop her. Why are you crying stupid girl? Never mind. She turns to run again but I have grabbed her backpack and I won't let her go. Let me go. No, why are you crying? I would never run from anything, I know I would never cry either, no I would never cry at anything or run from anything because that would make me a bad soldier. Let me go, she says. Sally wiggles out of her backpack and runs down the dirt road. Hey, wait up, stupid. Leave me alone. She is running as fast as she can. I can tell she is running as fast as she can but that is not that fast, not really fast at all. Hey, stupid, stop running, I say. Sally runs off the dirt road and into the woods where there are branches and holes and all kinds of animals. Sally, don't go into the woods. This is stupid. Sally ducks under branches and keeps running. Here, take your stupid backpack. I don't want to keep running after you, stupid girl. I'll give you the bag and you can go cry in the woods. Stupid girl. Sally, I don't care anymore, take your bag. But Sally won't stop running. By now I can see that she is still crying very much, she is crying all over her face and all down her neck. She is crying quite a lot, I think. Just leave me alone, Roger, she says again. I wish I was on the other side of the river, I think. There are houses with yards as big as the playground there. And the kids all sleep over at each others houses and tell stories and I can never go because I live over on this side of the river. It just isn't right, Mike says. No, Rita agrees, it would be wrong for you to come. You're a soldier. Sally doesn't stop running until she is in the clearing by the tire factory. Then she falls to the ground, out of breath. Her legs are all cut up. Here's your stupid bag, Sally. Sally doesn't say anything. She is crying and looking at her legs and she is out of breath. I turn to walk away. You know, she says and she is almost smiling, I don't think the river is really the reason they don't let you go over there. I look at her and I know that my face is turning red. You're a stupid girl, I say. I am suddenly very warm. Besides, I mutter, I am just waiting for a chance to go. I know, Sally says. You don't know anything stupid girl, I think. I am a good soldier, I think.

8.19.2008

haiku

"Fuck em all."

The decision was easy. Malthus clamped his hand over the holes in the phone. "Fuck em all," he said again.

Outside his window gulls moved slowly in the air.

The sea moved down below, behind the buildings, and did not object or say anything at all.

8.18.2008

you get what you want when you want what you get

we take the crooked arm of the river and bend it straight. there is more than one way to be a kindandloving animal, and we have moved between the forested banks, leaves big as hands, always stepping over the bones of dead. they wanted a straighter river, a better life, to be better lovers. we decide to believe they tried their best. if not then our parents and parents parents were no different from the river rats and the mute dumb leaves, who never get better. Who blow in the wind and let go.

8.16.2008

I beg = a glance

No, no, alas, the animal is gone from me. Still, I do propose to ache. I propose to regret and to roar at the skating mice in my skin, to unveil the vibrant and lurid pose of my own animal in full hunger, insatiable, un-owned by the rigorous matrices, the unfounded and incomplete rational constructs. No, I will not regret my denial of her inclusions, her innuendo. Ah, but an animal, but ever an animal. I, in complete denial, exist beyond temptation and beyond the living. I beyond the living. Ah, such as it seems, I have come to a quite terrible pass. She is but a ghost and my fingers are checking the boxes and writing the orders of industry, of social order, of the most important of missions—ah, of what I cry each day and no longer demand to know the lines of my own hands! I cry each day in the ever starvation of my skin. No, I will not begrudge him, not ever. He the purposeless collector, collector of all things. No, I expel this future and this life from me. Even in segregation my skin will not permit a life in hibernation and desperation.

I renounce you, father! I will not serve.

She, she her animal, she her temptress acceptance, she her will to un-skin my throne that is my very pulse.

6.11.2008

song for you

so we are here to say the names of everything that's sacred:
fingers and hands
rock and roll bands
and all the blossoms calling
packets of light
to fall from the sky
the morning of your wedding

katie grace out from her face all the blossoms falling
and we are here
to say the names
of everything that's calling
to let go our plans
for life's demands
I'd rather die than never
have the chance to be alive
and in the world together

so we are here say the names of all that's sacred:
katie grace
her face
and all everything is calling to be
named just once
before it is forgotten saying
"I'm here I'm here"
so touch her and remember that

your words
and mine
are packets of light

and her words
and mind
are packets of light

and your words
and mind
are packets of light

and your words
and mine
shine and disappear

forever

American Adulthood: Part I

Time


The fragmented self is the mark of American adulthood. In this way it is no different than childhood. I like you today, hate you tomorrow, I don't know why. It is difficult to remain in time in America.

Take drugs or alcohol. Take caffeine, extended shopping runs, television. There are many ways to pull the needle from the record, so to speak. They are the same insofar as they all permit a RESET. As in:

Man: I feel terrible today. I don't know why.

He gets high.

Man: I don't remember what I was thinking about this morning.

It may be a good time or not, the high -- or even a period of intensified bad times -- but when he comes down he finds himself differently oriented toward people and things in the world. The change is not external though it manifests there.

What does it mean to be fragmented? It means an ability to compartmentalize related things as if they were unrelated. As in:

Man: I am a kind person, and I feel ready to love. In the meantime, I will continue to masturbate to bondage and sadomasochist pornography.

Later he may think to himself how he loves his sister and his mother. He is fragmented, lacking the ability to move freely between all his parts and uncover the feelings they hide and claim them as his own. When he masturbates, he experiences himself in a way that is different fundamentally than when he speaks to his sister, or is charming on a date.

Do not get fixated on masturbation. Fragmentation is the condition, and however the fragmented self seeks to step out of time and RESET is informative about the self but ultimately irrelevant. To use cocaine, to buy shoes, to play sudoku... these things will not lift the needle for everyone. Only for an American adult are they passageways outside of time. The man brings fragmentation to everyone he engages. He may be reseting as he gives advice, or makes love.

It is not an issue of being false. It is impossible to feel happy all the time in America; impossible anywhere; yet the American adult cannot stand to suffer. Suffering threatens him to detonate him at the fissures. He will not SIT WITH the feeling. He will not just hurt. And so he finds & expands passageways outside of time -- where just as sound is to space no feeling can travel -- and these are divisions in himself like many rooms within a house that he can move to without ever having to make any his own.

If he did just hurt and sat with the hurt it would blossom and show him the essence of its life. Eventually he would recognize its life as his own and its essence as his. Then maybe one day he could sit with his essence until it too blossoms and out comes the soul to show him: there is only one soul, and it is continuous.

4.24.2008

Containments, etc

Mine is unadorned, hmph, casual, causal--the natural involvement (due, of course, to distance from objective infatuation, subjective incest, hmph--as in, my dear fawn, he was a lordy resistor to my temptations but truly unequaled to my size: As I am). Once wearing, unashamed, the commitment. Now, sickly worn by repetition. He will not, as agreed, even in seclusion, advocate the advancement of the female population, let alone, matriarchal conditioning.

The other avenues, my friend, are far less bitter but it has oft occurred within an attenuated sure, yet nevertheless awakened, desolation that I am far more fearful. And, here, there is not even an alley to sequester the loose realities of the absolute, sure, the "crumbling" dissonance of "collapse"--of my lap, my pal, my judgment has persevered to an agent of everlasting decay: back and through the in and the out and, without the ironic tremble: Through! Ah, there is, at last, you see, the general posturing of an adolescent presence. My own, I beg, will not abide by such disgrace, such disturbance. Not that which has permitted the excuse of ineptitude.

Ah, the graceful and intrusive introduction of the contemporary capitalist female (as if, in an inadequate display of wisdom, their own intimate disclosures procured no insight into the feeble putrefaction of the external containments!). And I, too, I do adore the remains, the lasting glimpse of the absolute. But the newly chartered, the newly present--oh, tut their abandonment, their restless squalor of confident resource, the un-becoming exchange of character without addition--assimilation without progression. How the altercations could not but be without full guile! And in a hand no longer subject to angst, the "crumble", indeed, the "collapse" of perhaps the finer half of the finer spirit in the absence of the vacuum, in the absence of the pitiless--we, now, like all the others.

This decrepit introduction. We are far less active in a resolution to empty--far more active in a resolution to complete. And, now, against the only hands that were fair, we are concerned and certain that ours here (ours only) survive and do not survive by source of outer containment.

Where now is the absolute. We had already squandered ours and now, in glee, permit them to squander all that will be in remains.

4.19.2008

Jersey Turnpike, etc

I have begun, he suggests (a martyr of course), in similar conditions: the natural inclination, as such, is to suppose the premise is ill-founded and wasted by tasteless inhibition. There is the harrowing recognition that the skeleton of objective success is mired in incapacitation and incompetence. As such, the pedestrian garden opposite the freeway provides a suitable yet unbalanced situational harbor: there are upset participants in the frequency of casual encounters--some, regardless, much more displeased than others. The traffic, while in usual aggressive fashion, holds no demands on the greater political leadership. We are not generally disposed to claim ownership over the market economy, as such, an informal yet published (official documentation) rebuttal over lethal overnight crashes. There is no traffic at that time, he suggests later (no longer a martyr--no, no, of course not). The internet exposition, clean, is un-lent and he borrows twenty-five cents from a street walker--she, of all hookers, is a kind soul, he considers later, though bothered by the suspicion that the entrails of his deceased uncle now trace the undergarments of the east river. No, the entire structure, while formed in such concrete images of human possibility, could not substantially support an ill-conceived premise. It would be ridiculous! There are, as far as I can demand, ins and outs to the disposition of the modern tyrant and he is in no mood for coercive sex. The ensuing laughter, mild in character, yet aggressive in appearance, suggests, oddly, that his place, in the outer reaches of Queens, has become a distraction to the menial laborers and, out of good faith, a request for immediate departure is granted. They will not enjoy my company in Bermuda, he exclaims, but, as such, they are uninterested in the posturing of the beautified village personage. At least, in the latest of sickness, I am indebted, quite well, to my place of encounter. Yes, yes, it still enjoys its miserable sense of identity, nurtured by the meek and antisocial gypsy. At last, while corruptible, she casually nods, accepts a gesture--perhaps even a causal arrow of seduction (I will win, he decides, again, ill conceived in manner and approach). Abandoned eventually, he sours at the turn, once more, of light. There are only ever cars and trucks after all, he mutters, and it is far too fucking loud to hear myself think.

4.16.2008

starting from the beginning

and last night because of a dream I was young again, swimming with Wendy my mother at the Y. And everything around the edges was lost, and everything at the center hurt -- because it was more there than there. Gaaaaah ! there is no sound for it in the silent page. I lean my head back to let it out to the sky : and what is it? the noise of being alive! I was there, that was me, and I am carrying me inside myself still; sometimes am I allowed in--

Downstairs the neighbor's brand new baby is crying gaaaeeh! gaeeeh! She vibrates the air in periodic waves and they come crashing up through the floorboards and around in my bedroom, colliding with the walls and my ears which can be likened to two mouths drinking them in. You are here! I hear you! Do you hear me?

Is there any other question, S., anything else that can be asked?

*

4.15.2008

Oh my, oh well

....dismissed, perhaps, acknowledging a faint illusory subjective termination—a dream, a terrible dream. Late in the year, October, maybe, no November—no, later still, it was December, telescoping backwards, and it was white, white all around, on the landing in front of the library too, it was white like it was all the same. It was all very white. Yes, yes!

The limitless initial embrace of the unbound color, this absence of color (or all of the colors together, as in, white light, of course) is detailed as significant, complete, absolute. Oh my! But its grasp, oh its grasp is quite unlike its embrace, yes, yes--it is ever fearful to let go. It will not like to let go. It will not ever like to let go. Oh well. There is only ice, she proclaims, she an intruder, a foreigner, like the others, she is not as pale but it is still cold to her—no, of course it is cold to her. They are racist. This is a beautiful place. No, there is nothing here but ice.

It is December, A. It has long since passed the aged autumn of the primary maturation, the glimpse into the dissolving sun—and yes, the weariness, the wariness even, of its disappearance, like, I only perhaps suppose, abandonment. There aren’t even crosses—criss-crosses still—that begin to anticipate and elucidate the murderous pathway into the abandonment of this primary maturation, this sunless containment: this winter is ice and it is only December.

I thought as once Jerome thought, I would lose my voice in such cold, in such vociferous activity—but it was not winter that takes its place in ice but ice that takes its place in winter and I found, at least a while, that I could scream quite well and even, once dejected, faint…..

4.14.2008

untitled

I want to say exactly what I want, and mean it.

You are the product of a conspiracy centuries and centuries old, centuries like pages in books stacked up through the sky.

Are you your mind? Can I I bother you a bit, and say that you are not the things you think about, or the sum of your numerable parts?

Once I got high and wrote these words:

"lonely lonely who is lonely?

everyone's fingers look like mine--"

Though I was. I was lonely. I am not lonely anymore.

Why just last night before sleep came I was allowed to leave myself and move amongst friends and strangers I saw that day until I reached a place to stand that was the intersection of everyone, and everything good that happened to them happened to me. And I went to sleep, smiling.

You -- what do you want, exactly? To be loved? To be safe? Do you want to swim through the ocean of others up to the sun? Do you want to swallow cities? To be rich? To be stronger than me? Do you want to hold me down and feel me, afraid?

Once I came up from the subway stairs and the sky was so wide for a second, my heart shook with fear. I thought: that must be what oblivion feels like.

(S., I am going to write these until I can speak honestly to you, and in the hope that I will then speak honestly to everyone. There are things on this page that are not true, it still mostly waste. I am glad you are out there. You help me separate the essential from the rest.)

I have already told many of my stories, made some people laugh, made some think. What was I trying to say? Will I ever say it?

I will keep trying.

Wrangled, Unpredictable Girl

The resolution, impossible to predict, is completed (with subtle angst), against the pedestrian notation, with implacable perfection. I am strangled and: There is no parking here. The commentary was without sync and she was an outsider, a tramp, and a whore: for seventy-five US dollars. We did not like her much. But it was impossible to predict. The natural course of the general agreement permitted occasional oversight and, while, indisposed by the erratic behavior of her father-in-law, she was nevertheless suicidal and acutely overwhelmed by meaninglessness. Yes, she was never one to utter, as she overheard, casually in the dining hall: I don’t like thinking like that because it is too serious. Those were, kindly, in betrayal and tempting words—an excuse, she reasoned, to commit suicide. Again, impossible to predict. The avalanche of aggression, the landslide of hate, the—Wait. Re-address the crowd as a custodian of terse discourse. Those were moments of resolution and this one, oh, unlike the feeble companions, was destined to be absolute and rip the guts out of the ladies locker room. We were only murdered by our own hands, the common hand wrote, in sign language: Fuck you. I don’t think anybody eats take out from IL Chino anymore, she commented and this, yes, yes, only hours, even hours, before her attempt. There are seventy-six records that are incomplete and incompatible with natural course of existence and none of them is in-line with the feminine hierarchy of unqualified, sure, unadulterated observance: life, golly gee, is so darn precious. Impossible to predict and yet the courtesy of the evasive man, the countertop woman, could not possibly describe the disparity between the two (yes?)—the obsolete version of psychological diagnosis and the modern, less academic, version of strangling suicide…Murder. Oh my, she only whispered, occasionally, as if her own dear sister would depart in such anger and impolite impetuous classlessness: I must, I admit, I must rearrange my dressing gowns. The warm-up simply will not do. Oh, my sordid and ugly impertinent daughter! The abuse of detachment is sourly confounded with your sick insolence, her mother remarks, purposefully, after the arraignment, the coming trial the disappearance of her self-worth into the lottery: 55 years.

Suicide, dear-dear, it was only ever impossible to predict.

4.13.2008

Tied

I am attracted to my teenage self, she mutters and in suggestion, perhaps permissive toward her ailing and diminished sexual appetite, poses: I am a lesbian. No, I was a lesbian. I am no longer a deviant of any type. Deviant? The casual meander in and out of proper social attire exhausts even the most vigilant conformist. Without a doubt, the dabbling and coercive injection, do not persuade the natural skin. The aging process, therefore, not only a marker of wisdom (in most cases, as such, perhaps, in many cases) but also a liberation into the natural self, if permitted, or the tame and cured and harbored self, if of weak resolve. She is in spandex in the photograph and her hair is permed. Stylistically, appropriate and even risqué, for the time—in an unbecoming and unflattering era there were few opportunities to stray and become: No! There were never unbecoming times.

The marker in the harbor.

Seventeen, he admits and, frequently, cautiously, his son is chagrined: to my own skin, he observes, we are wedded. The discharge from captivity is, ironically, the deliverance into isolated and divided time: minutes, hereby, are counted and exchanged, eagerly, for minutes, against days—against months, in starving circumstances, though never officially condoned, against years. We have many years, the son admonishes his father but his father is now chagrined: to my own skin, he too observes, we are wedded.

And then?

And then, hmph, he sighs, I willfully laid my back against the concrete, willfully flat and on the cold, and let them tie me there until I could not move, each piece of me on the ground and could not move until I could only think and only for a minute could I think that maybe I was not tied to the ground. I am attracted to myself at seventeen, he says and she agrees. I was beautiful and unattached and now I am tied to concrete. It is easy to see that you are tied to concrete when your children trip over you and tie themselves to adjacent concrete blocks. This is not so bad.

Seventeen, he says. I think I was sixteen, she mutters.

4.06.2008

Jungle

The fabled in and out of the mistress, while coy and unsure of her perfected motion, were nevertheless far superior to ordinary and mechanistic performance. She was committed, quite literally, to the forcible notion of procured sexual nature. Buying sex, a seemingly innocuous act of maturation, provided a series of dangerous and hideous ailments--most specifically the contraction of inhospitable hosts. She was opposed to such disease (and appropriately, as such) determined that the most capable and subservient guest would be subject to detailed questionnaires and medical examination. The clinic was modest and unbecoming. Suitably, and clandestinely, affixed to the back of a utility closet in the basement of a sheet metal warehouse in the outskirts of industrial sprawl, the clinic enabled a casual--and, yes, quite elegant--yet confidential promise. A promise she felt destined to entertain (though the in and out, in its entrapment, is often conjured as the unveiling of a public insecurity, a desperate ascent into and out of depressive states--especially, in this context, under the allegiance of capital). The men were, mostly, uncharacteristic in their starvation. I have witnessed, by god, a trembling man, she once commented and then retracted upon noticing her company. The investigation, she scoffed, was by far and away the most thorough investment I have ever made.

For its allure and splendid possibility, the investigation was thorough. Her medical training consisted of three days on an overnight canoe expedition, or retreat, in the upper amazon basin during which she operated systematically on spider monkeys. The resemblance, their resemblance, to the human species and to life in general was fascinating and inspiring. The daily waddling motion suggested a livelihood that could not be replicated in laboratories nor imagined in text and it sprung to being, quite noticeably and awkwardly, the foundation of future and applied sexual demand. It is, after all, only waddling (so far as I can imagine). Questioned later in the aftermath of the scandal, she did not deny the existence of common parasitic injections. In truth, she witnessed, the elaborate arrival at successful orgasm required a detour into socially unfavorable methods. They are, however, a necessary and virulent component to opposite sex interaction. And, ultimately, of course, lethal.

She was modest in her appraisal of the clinic though never unassuming in appearance. The stages of development, really a cascade of chance occurrence, demand an opposite, a complimentary host. A being willfully engaging in the subtraction of life. I would dress, she confided, occasionally in leather and sometimes in satin. But never cotton, not unless the engagement was one of nostalgia. But that was rare. Only once, in a questionnaire accidently given to the child of a chemically addicted lobbyist, did she suspect that the in and out motion, the parasitic injection, might incidentally cause a reaction formation of the adult population--a stance, if survived, would permit the aging man to define himself purely in opposition to his surroundings. However, she admitted, this was not ever the purpose of the clinic. You see, the men were supposed to die at climax. It appears, I now believe, that the amazon basin was not producing the lethality to operate a clinic of such absolute intent.

4.01.2008

Witness, I will not massacre Myself

The slaughter of the world, quickly excused as a prevarication, nevertheless introduced the usually deceptive and awkward illusory tyrant as greedy—indeed selfish. The subsequent laughter (by chance, surely) arriving at the weekly bridge club meeting did far less to restrain the man than encourage him to gloat: we are enough, all of us, we are enough. The hierarchy, it appears, has been replaced. Generally, locked inside the vision of success, concealed in normalcy and haunted by a primal glimpse at rebellion: there is a union, of sorts. Nevertheless, the immediate chaos which ensued (or, these are certainly not my possessions nor my principle worth) managed to unveil minor differences in the daily routines of sexual deviants versus star athletes, prosperous businessmen, teachers—doctors?...most certainly, doctors…we are not valued without value. It was tautological in its intent and even less pleasing or fulfilling in reward. The end, as punishment inadequate, misplaced the primitive suggestion: I am corrupted by the mere suggestion that I must conform. The potential option evades the eventual conquistador and he, alas he alone, is met with model success in an evaporating skin. Perhaps, by chance, he may even request his execution as a remaining reminder of his inability to adhere, to belong, to them. It is the vanquishing of such a identity the modern thinking man becomes: he is, no longer by chance, a chance to witness his only observable and owned being, his spiritual self, his redemption at the eager failure of all passage of development and advancement: his betrayal of only this, this skin. He is not the sum of markings and hair and canard: he is a resolution. There are no exclamations in the final burial of the driving mind that will not breed inadequacy into the un-sterile, fruited, existence that we have found as exception and as ours: it is not an arrival of acceptance and of approval, it is not a landscape of social adequacy, of recommendation, of networking: it is, on hands that are only hands, in skin that will un-become, the solemn promise, the blessing embrace--it is the spirit of the skin and the absolute passion of observance: to witness and not to force a world into it. They have, I suppose, the hardly misinformed tyrant suggests, asked--continually though not universally--bad questions. I am un-become at the insistence that I must become and there is an environment on which I will beast myself to pieces in one memory.

For when I was eighteen, I forced to memory (and have easily forgotten) my own self, the self-imposed and created principle of my life: in deep wells I gather water and feel the rhythm of the earth upon my soul.

3.13.2008

The World

The man with the newspaper head he said "I've had enough of TV for one life" but didn't know what to do next. The doorbell didn't ring. So he picked himself up off the couch and looked out the window past the southern lights shining between skyscrapers in the sky. Outside people walking by could look up and read what the President should have said right there on his face. "There's got to be someone out there who is like me," he thought.

But all the way across town was a woman with heart on top of her neck and it led her around to all the worst men in New York. "I can't help I'm like this maybe its me maybe its my mother like my analyst said, lately I'm not too sure of anything anymore. If there's someone out there who knows how to hurt well that's the one I end up with, that's the one I deserve, I guess, I don't know, it's a crazy world." So she comforted herself with the TV screen which was just rays of light, red blue and green, and another parameter to control the transparency of things.

In other parts of the world things weren't so transparent: a car was wrecked, the driver didn't plan it, he was thinking of whether or not to go to the store. As for me I was having a difficult time telling the difference between what's waste and what's mine. I stayed up very late for six days straight. One morning right before 4am I took a walk and spotted our friend the man with the newspaper head staring at me down below. I gave him a friendly wave.

"I don't understand people" he said again for what was the fourth time that night and twelfth that weekend. It didn't make him feel any better, or for just a second anyway, before feeling a little worse than before. Somewhere inside his paper head was a worried little heart in which the connection was cut between himself and all the other living things he saw. Whereas for her it wasn't hard to see that there is no difference between "you" and "me", that's what got her into trouble most of all: the willingness to quickly take down her walls.

So what do we have? A man with a head full of headlines that read like a long strange poem and the woman in bed who dreams of a day she could properly cover her heart. And then there's me, taking long late night walks. The matches are out. The man has had enough. The woman is getting ready to do something she will regret. And the people on the screen -- just projections. When I turn them off, all that's left on the screen is the world and me: looking at myself, looking back at me.