the end

And so the story was over and its narrator no longer hovering outside the page turned inside and became a bright blue ball of light; and the actor who was the hero was no longer bound by the narrator's words, and he moved free and fast down the dark city streets, the bright blue ball of light ahead of him, which he chased while kicking up his heels and letting out shouts into the world; he became a dumb animal no longer mute, still preverbal, with great deep guttural sounds shaking his ribs as he cried out with the realization that the narrator that once held him in time and place (to women he loved, things his mother said when and all the work he put his hand to) finally let him go.

So where are we now? It wasn't my story to tell anymore, and I couldn't slow down. As I rose up I felt his hand so close to me, I could feel him breathing hard and realized as much as I knew about what came before -- his words, his scar, his love -- neither of us had any idea what was going to happen next.

for example

the reasons seemed quite simple in the end. in every bag was x number of marbles. we knew they were red, blue, and white. but we didn't know how many there were of each, or how to make them sing. this was a mission of mine, it was personal, you know, so I didn't explain to anyone else why I wanted to do it. I just said,

how can we teach these marbles to sing?

and padro replied,

hold them close to the ears in the side of your head until they see what happens inside. then they will understand, all of them, even if x > 20 or x > 30 or x >= the number of cells in your head, or heart, or limbs, whatever, you see it didn't matter in the end, it was quite simple: take what you need from the thing with no mouth, no way to sing, and put it into your mouth and then open wide. and if it works everyone will hear what you've been needing, what you've been wanting, more than anything else, and no one will know what you had to lose or let go of or break to get it, or how I didn't even know what I wanted except to know what I wanted to want next.

She got normal, after it wasn't so normal because it was all fighting

She was just fucking counting, you know, just sitting there and fucking counting, each piece, like he was a goddamn set of marbles. He gets up, stands on the sink, squats. You're going to break the sink, she says. She is looking at her nails and filing them. I'm not gonna break the fucking sink. He spits on his toes. God damn fucking crazy bitch, she is, you know, she's got some nerve to take us out, show us around that entire factory and then come back, as if she didn't know that whole time, as if she wasn't thinking about, oh shit, I have a man blown to pieces in my goddamn office and now I'm going to go pick him up, piece by piece, and put him in a bag and bury him. You don't know she buried him. What you think she ate him? Get a grip, Kelsie. He hops off the sink and stretches his lower back. The sun has come up now, between the buildings at first, and now into the bathroom. He squints. She's gonna have something coming to her, you know, something that she doesn't expect, something that is gonna knock her off this blithely indifferent bullshit. She just watched her best friend get blown to pieces, Pete. What do you think she should do? Act normal? Give me a break. Kelsie sits on the toilet. She is still looking at her nails. I wouldn't for a second think you'd know what to do if Scott got blown up. I don't expect you'd know exactly how to react--Well I sure as shit wouldn't pick him up piece by piece and put him in a goddamn sack. That's for sure. What would you do? Call the police? Call his parents? Jesus, Kelsie, you sound like a fucking nut. Yes, I'd call the cops, I'd call his parents. He is looking at the street. That man is still bugging people, he thinks. The man with the new tennis shoes, clean haircut, begging. Give it a break, asshole, you're obviously not on the brink. Now I have to go back there and see her again and ask her if she's all right, if she got rid of the body all right. He yawns and scratches his stomach. I hate that crazy bitch. She saved your ass more than once. What? You should be glad you have a job, Pete. You should be glad you can walk over there and dick around all day and not worry about it. So she has to exercise a different type of social control. It is her place. And I wouldn't start complaining, not right now. Yelling starts in the other room. Fuck, they are already up. Yeah and they are gonna be asking about their uncle, if not today, then tomorrow and if you go and tell them that he got blown up and Lucy put him in a bag--then what? Well, I'm not gonna like it all that much. I have far too much to do this week, we have the builders coming on Thursday and after that, well, you know, its the holidays and then your parents are coming, and they just don't need this right now. Besides, its not like she blew him up. I wish they'd stop yelling so early and just decide they hate each other. Yeah, me too, then maybe we all wouldn't be picking up pieces of each other and putting them in bags.

quality, hetra

...I thought that just once, you know, just at that one time, when everything was going pretty smooth, that something was gonna work, something was gonna align itself with all that magic out there, you know, all that synthesis out there, that something was gonna definitely gonna follow, I mean, it was gonna happen, it was gonna happen because, after all, I would have spent enough hours, yeah, enough time, putting all those little pieces together, just sticking them together, just making sure, ever so sure, you know, that they were all in the right spots, in the right places, that each one, each one of those things was where it had to be, where it could only be, and that when it was all built up, you know, after all those hours, it was going to stand and look back down, back down at me and everybody around me and it would be there shining about, right there, you know, at all of us, and at me, and it would be that construction of work, you know, a big construction of work, like nothing in it that was asleep or that was trying to fall asleep, like nothing in it that was considering itself foolish, or considering itself out of place, or considering itself, really, at all, it would just be beaming, like all those pieces, each one of those pieces really was in the spot that it was supposed to be, that only spot it could ever be, and then, maybe, I thought, you know at least that once, that it wouldn't really be beaming because it was proud of anything, it wouldn't really be beaming because it had accomplished anything or because it was receiving all this attention, no, it wouldn't really be acting at all, I mean, it, up there, all completed and built in the only way it could ever be built, as the only thing it could ever be, you know, with all those pieces sticking together, just like they had to be sticking together and it standing up there, in its place, it, would be that thing that was completed only in that it was all that it had ever intended to be, and all its parts, you know, each one of its parts, was only there because it was part of that intention, part of the model in presentation, with no utility, with no action, no, it wasn't about to leap out and squash out, you know, some major social problem, or fix something with the taxes, it was a real exhibit, you know, of what it was to be all that was intended, without carrying the rest, without carrying around with it, the rest of the things that weren't intended, the rest of the things that really had nothing to do with intention, place, you know, the stuff that wasn't really important to it, that didn't represent it, that didn't complete that form of intention, were just left aside, you know, never attached in place, didn't really every have a place. Yeah, I suppose, that is what I thought, when it was about to decide how to choose, how to choose anything at all, but I, you know, I just chose the wrong thing, you know, even after all that talk and all that work, you know, even after I had constructed this walking piece of newspaper or whatever, I just thought maybe it wasn't really worth it, maybe it didn't really have all those pieces that it needed and maybe it needed some other pieces, and so, after a while, I started adding a bunch of other pieces until, you know, I have a room full of crap....

Mr. Madison refrains from pleading guilty

I was collecting hair, like little bits of hair, it was harmless, really, I mean, from barbershops, they throw it out at the end of the day and I was collecting it and using it, that isn't really stalking, not like they say it is, I was using the hair, its not like I was obsessing with the hair or sleeping with it, or putting it in my mouth and eating it, you know, I was collecting it, and I happened to go to places like salons, you know, among other places, hundreds of other places, not just salons, not just women's salons and not just the salon that she happens to go to every week, but other places too, like the barbershop off Delancy, that place has such good business, I could go twice a day and get two garbage bags full of hair, and they don't even watch their dumpsters, they don't care at all, I mean, have them go through all that hair and see if this is really stalking, let them see how much, you know, hair I was collecting and then they can come back to me, they can come back right here and say look we've seen all this, you know, we've seen this hair we've run a lot of tests on this hair and we think you were stalking 2,552 people since last july, and you are under arrest for stalking 2,552 people for nine months, because really, that is what they are going to find, when they start tracing all these DNA things that they are going to have to trace, they aren't going to find one lonely woman from the heights, they are gonna find a bunch of, you know, hobos, and whatnot, and those freaks from the lower haight and even the mission types, and probably, because, I don't know, I was at this for a long time, they are gonna come across all sorts of people, maybe even people they know, like that couple from the marina that likes the salon off van ness, then what, you know, all of them are going to come on in here, telling me that I can't like hair and I can't collect things that don't belong to me even though nobody wants it anymore, nobody wants their hair that they don't have anymore, its not like there are a bunch of people saying they miss all their hair and they wish they had collected their hair all their lives and stored it up in a room somewhere, in a cabin somewhere, like in vermont, and kept adding to it every six weeks, you know, kept driving or flying up to their cabin and keeping their hair, its not like this is happening, so I'm taking something that nobody wants, least of all that woman, and I'm collecting it, I'm using it, I'm using the things that nobody wants, nobody wants to have anymore, and they leave all over the place, and I'm using it, but they can't have that, it must be stalking, because once you start collecting the things that once were people, that once were part of people, all those people in the heights and all those people downtown start saying that you can't take things that aren't yours even if nobody wants it anymore--otherwise you are just stalking, plain and simple, just stalking the women in the salons, making them feel unsafe, making them feel unsafe because you're using their garbage, you know, the stuff they don't want anymore, and they are feeling unsafe because it was theirs, once, you know, like a pair of pants, and now they have decided they don't want it, don't want it all, and they don't want anybody else to have it either even if I'm just making carpets, rugs really, for the nice couples north of the city.

it bombed: .....

How about a fistfight? Real casual, after she finishes vacuuming in here. The goddamn buzzing is making me mad. She looks like she just got out of space and then she just got out of the gym and then she just came in here and started yelling. The place is already clean, you know. The place is already god-damn clean. We should just fistfight because, really, after all this time, I think I've slipped. No, I'll get back up, eventually, and re-order this power structure, to start looking like it should, away from this penetrating mold of shit that is coming at my face everyday at about ten billion miles an hour. I used to like to look at them, even when I wasn't thinking that I was looking at them. Now, I am just tired. They are all playing with the same rules and none of them is really playing by any rules that really make sense. I want to run a thousand miles an hour and burn my face on the outer ozone and then come back and say: See, that was space. Way up there, that was fucking space. You goddamn apes still don't get it. At least then I'd have a real burn on my face and when I walked around here, people would say, wow, there goes that man with the burn on his face because he touched heaven. Then recognition would be all about the warring and acting and I could live like a king knowing that I was something, even if I don't think that I want to care what they are thinking. Even if, really, I think I'm pleasing a bunch of goddamn apes who are thinking they are better at finding order and systems and patterns, better at looking at patterns and memorizing colors. No, its horseshit, they are all different color reds. Thats like saying all those people are white. They aren't really white. Some of them are, but not really. I could run one thousand miles an hour, you know.

that is infidelity

www.makeyourselftransparent.com

The Color Currency of Nature

"Red toadstools, red ladybirds, red poppies, are dangerous to eat, but red tomatoes, red strawberries, red apples, are good. The open mouth of an aggressive monkey is threatening, but the red bottom of a sexually receptive female is appealing. The flushed cheeks of a man or a woman may indicate anger, but they may equally indicate pleasure. Thus the colour red, of itself, can do no more than alert the viewer, preparing him to receive a potentially important message; the content of the message can be interpreted only when the context of the redness is defined."

Nicholas Humphrey, 1976

Creativity

Elizabeth said that once she wrote an international best-seller, she was fucked. Really fucked, she said, into microphone, into the crowd, their faces wide open and blank and waiting,...

She told them though that in East Africa when the men dance well the onlookers chant Allah Allah and that's how it is to be creative, to let God come through. But what of the next morning? When the dancer wakes, and his body aches, and he's getting a little fat, a little older? How will he feel when Allah leaves him?

Elizabeth said what she wants most of all is to tell Allah, Hey, I'm working hard, come visit me today. She wants Allah to do His part.

And everyone claps, a sound like thunder they make with their hands.

fuck emememememem

The universe has a shape. How weird is that? It took 10 computers 12 weeks to draw it in flat 3 dimensional space. How many parametric equations will it take before one tells you it has a name and it is yours? What are you then? I raised my hand and said humanity is what we are left with. I tried to warn them not to count losing ground as a loss. But they were too busy clutching their dicks, swinging them sadly at guitars and Picassos, saying there is Nothing that can replace me Nothing like me like me me me me me me me m em em em eme me me me me me me me me me me em em em eme meme me me me me me me em e

but ah they were already being replaced

by the distant cumulus clouds, drawing shapes of dinosaurs

in the strange blue lawn

AR? AR? Rules, rules, rules.

There is no way out of the rules, woman. Generally speaking, this would probably be the time to witness a massacre and engage in formal analysis, but we have so few participants that we are requesting you join the opposition.

Yes, in front of the man with the scythe.

BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang
BangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBangBang

No shots were actually fired. As appropriate witness to the defense, this was not a modern engagement of military force, hence the general adoption of sophisticated and more progressive definitions of "woman" and "man" would be, by all accounts, crudely biased. We cannot create standards and hold the past accountable.

............................
......................shhhhhhhhhh..........
.....shhhhhhhhh.....................shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........
ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh..............

The eruptive nature of the witness precludes a logical and systematic review of his behavior. Therefore, in regards to the charge of inadequate manslaughter, all further lengthy and academic discussion is dismissed.

Inadequate manslaughter?
Yes.

BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep
BeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeepBeep

Inadequate manslaugther?
Due to the conditions, so stipulated, and as evidence of the social triangle (hence the informed consent of massacre), we cannot determine that the nature of such an action, a truly absolute action (ok, arguably) would necessarily involve the systematic unmaking of this, or any, woman. In pedestrian terms, there is little appropriate data that elucidates the germane nature of death in live court-room exercises.

Of course, she is not alive. Of course, thereby, it is not proven that it is anything but removal of an opposite (or the addition of a disimilar trait). Thereby, making her a creation that she could not ever have possibly been. No recognizeable identity in this world would hold such a list of definitions as identity.

This is, obviously, inadequate manslaughter.

I think I see your reflection in the pond

This is a map of georgia:



No, this is a map of georgia:



They still kill people in georgia. They tie them to trees and light them on fire. I have seen it. In which georgia?

This one:



I have a friend in georgia. He isn't tied to a tree. He must be one of those free georgians. You know, the kind that live here:



I don't think the free georgians live there. Not anymore. Its far too small.

lets go have a slumber party, Ghoriantta!

Thi s is a cl ue that--we are making ourselves into circ les. I run around the house, run aroun dt he house, ru nar oundth ehouse and ea tcho colateca ke. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Man = Ghoriantmab
Woman = Ghoriantta
Child = Ghorianttab
Eats = Ghorentab
And = Ghoreghore

Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab! Ghoriantmab Ghorentab Ghoriantta Ghoreghore Ghorianttab!

There, there, endless useless man. You didn't mean it. Go ea tcho colatec ake!

ultimately, the reductionist claim will murder all our senses

Stop counting?

I should just stop counting?

No............................ yes, wait, you see? wait.. ..........................................................
...................................................................
...................................................................
......................................................................
............god-less whore of a traiter gets arrested, penalized, sentenced, punished, and in traffic, crosses the street accidently, without a goddamn clue then you can resolve the issue of unfairness, peacefullness, bigotry, when he is hit by a truck, a UPS truck......................................................
.........................................................................
......................

I am not going to stop counting.

There are still fifty left over. I hate remainders. She is still working on that proof, you know, that 1=1. The rest of it, and I would motion toward all of it, is rather irrelevent without that.

I wouldn't kill anybody, not even myself, not for fifty left overs.

the single and only acceptance, like the future, like the past horror

He's a fucking animal, she said and she was upset, you know, red in the face, and crying, like she'd been hit. I know he hit you, I said. And she said, no, he didn't hit me--she said, he didn't touch me, he didn't, she said, no, he didn't hit me, and she grabbed me, you know on the arm, she grabbed my arm, and told me, you know, told me looking in my eye, she said, he didn't do this, he didn't hit me, and she told me to look at her, to look at her in the face, and she said it again, you know, making sure she was looking at me, making real sure she was looking right at me, and...I don't know what happened, honest, I am sitting here right now, you know, all together, talking like I am completely under control just as I was standing right there, all under control, watching her lower lip shake, just like it was off its own goddamn course and, I was under control you know, and I went to touch her hand, and I was thinking, he goddamn fucking hit her, that fucking asshole and I went to grab her hand, and she had this big cut on her hand, you know this massive cut, she was bleeding, she was bleeding on her hand, and she didn't even know it, but she must have noticed something because she saw my face change, you know, like it must have changed real quick because she started back, like she hadn't known she was bleeding, like she hadn't known she was all in blood, all over her hand, and then she started screaming, just screaming, and I ran out of there, you know, I can't really tell what was happening after that, you know just running, like real fast, and not really seeing anything around me, not really taking notice that there was anything around me, not really, but I could feel it, even when its all passed, I can still feel it, I can remember that blood in the skin, you know that rising blood level, like your body is storming, like its kicking up the sea, and its picking everything up, all the pieces, its picking them all up and throwing them all over the place, and changing the directions of everything until you don't know where the sky and the sea is, you don't know where your skin ends and the world is starting, you don't know if you are walking on actual streets, looking at actual houses, seeing actual people, you know, in actual places. But now, I don't know, I just remember her screaming, just screaming real loud like, like she knew I was going to go do something terrible, like she knew I was going to confront him.

He's a fucking animal, she said. You know, she said it, she came in, all red in the face, torn up, and she said it. Every once in a while, once in a blue, this blood picks me up, you know, picks me up like that wind and takes me somewhere else, somewhere over there, strips me of my clothes and my hair and all the things that are me, that detail me, that make me recognizeable. And I'm undressed, running. You know? I was real angry. I know I was angry. But that's not the thing that's ringing, you know, after the screaming, after she stops, somehow stops, its not that I was angry. I know I was angry. But after all that, you know, just sitting here, I can't help but think, you know, I can't help but know: I let that fucking man tell me my own place, my own future. I let that fucking man take my face long before I resigned to exist like this, you know, like this here, all confined. That fucking man. I let that fucking man tell me what I was, all that I was, all that I was ever gonna be. And I was ok that he was telling me that I was nothing, that I was without it all, undressed, unfit. That's the real horrow, you know. The real horror is this willful submission to all that I was ever told, all that I probably ever even knew, all that I was gonna become no matter what. And I fucking accepted it.

{break}

I thought it would be easier to perhaps integrate, not differentiate, the exact rate of change the difference you see between me and you. hwere and aI s thav toenca 't the ths ess see

that is noise on an otherwise purposeful signal.

"Assigning purpose or other intension to the observed process of matter and mechanical things is folly, and how we got religion in the first place, jackass."

He said. I think he really meant it. Blackboard's singing in the wind, I caught a whole lot of rain on my tongue and drowned.

Does God separate signal from noise, or it is to Him always and only signal -- pure relevant meaning?

or is it all noise

xxzzzxzxcv vcxxxxxxcvvdsaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaqaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

my early escalation into dissatisfaction

I could tell him to fuck off, you know, be really direct about it, just come out and tell him that I am tired of this fucking shit:

Where are you going?
I am going to class. I have a class. I need to sit in class.
Where is your friend?

I don't know. I haven't seen him. I think he is in Africa. Building houses and walking around the desert, real lost like.
Do you think he is lost?
Not really. He doesn't get lost.
Have you spoken to him lately?

No. I haven't spoken to him lately. Not in a long time. He is off walking on sand and then flying to strange places and eating strange foods.

I was hungry, real hungry, I think, I mean I must have been really hungry, like starving, you know, like hungry all over, like you are always a little bit faint, like you aren't getting the right things into your body even though you are getting something into your body but it's mostly the wrong things, or it certainly isn't enough of the right things. I don't think I was getting any of the right things. I was tired all the time and hungry. And then I was faint. I was crawling out of my skin, real sneaky like, like I was just letting my body crash. Then I collapsed, I just collapsed. It had everything to do with a dream, I think, everything that I've ever had with dreams. I mean, that is how you describe it, right? That's how I describe it, like a dream, at least that is how they would describe it. Right? Don't you think that is how they'd describe it? I would at least. Well, it felt like coming out of a spaceship or something, after I collapsed. You know the whole class had moved around, adjusted themselves to see maybe if they could see a little bit more and there I was walking in off the spaceship, waving to the little earth people, and still desperately hungry, my own mind watering, and the whole place looking like a goddamn desert, and there I am running back to it, with a big schmuck smile on my face, you know, eager to get back to this place where I know there is nothing for me to fucking eat. I couldn't even try to find something here. There is no chance that there is anything here. And I am just starting to fall flat, uncontrolled and flat, disappear into a self-loathing shadow of cactii--that would be my great finale. I have already come to recognize my ephemeral state and my limited range. But not my disappearance. I can't stand my willing disappearance.

He's not really in Africa is he?
I don't know if he's really in Africa. That's what he tells me. It sure sounds different than here.
Do you think he'll come back?
I don't think I'd come back. Not from Africa. Not when it is terribly romantic and beautiful in Africa.

never the same

I couldn't believe it was said, really, or that it even needed to be said at all. Sad clowns, balloon in the rain. I tried my best to look both ways, cross the street with arms wide open, sweaty palms pointing to God. He said, No way Jose, and then let the traffic flow over me like so many drops of rain. Balloons, clowns, God, nouns -- I've said them all so many different ways.

She didn't understand. "I want you to love me, always, like you used to, always," and I said love is a river -- you can go back to where you came from, but it is never the same.

The Language, Behavior, Attitude Triangle and its Useful though not always Self-Reflective Purposes

She started asking questions, you know, like real penetrating questions, the kind that made me look again, look at her again, and, not just because she was asking them, not just because of the circumstances (that would be cruel of me, wrong, right?), no, not just that, but because they were really penetrating questions, and they were getting at this problem she was having with, what I could only imagine, you know, some rather frequent occurence, like the problem was happening with some regular occurrence, you know, like often....exactly, because it was all about her neighbor and his lawn, or his fence, and it really had nothing to do with me, not ostensibly, at least, not that it couldn't have had nothing to do with me, no, I thought about that, you know, I look like him, or looked like him, and I got to thinking, one of these past nights, when that main electrical switch froze and they couldn't turn the damn lights off, well, I don't know why it took me so damn long, because I always rememebered her penetrating questions and her frequent occurences, but I never considered, not until this week, you know, I never really considered that she thought I was him, she thought it was my lawn or waste or whatever it was that she thought was wrong....no, she didn't phrase it like that, no of course she didn't phrase it like that, she said something like, inappropriate or careless, like she thought my action was inappropriate and careless and disrespectful and some other word...I haven't come across it yet, something else, but you see, I already am, changing the part of me, you know, I already am incorporating those things into my meal times and my outside time, you know, and taking some of those words, because she was always using those words and I even think she was using them correctly, and using them myself and making it a natural part of my conversation....so, no, I don't know, I think it just finally hit me, you know with the electricity on and all and my brain in that inbetween where it doesn't really want to recognize where it is, well, it doesn't ever want to recognize where it is, but then it didn't really want to be turned on and yet, like it was guiding itself, like it knew if it turned itself on, I'd screw it up. And that's when it hit me, right there, you know, right smack in the middle of the forhead, yeah, I thought, she was thinking I was her neighbor, all that time, she was thinking I was her neighbor, and all this could have been avoided, not that she should have really been approaching me like that, not really, but all this might have concluded in a different way had I just either really been her neighbor, because then I really would have been doing all those things that she wasn't liking or if she hadn't confused me with her neighbor, you know, either one, I think we'd be in different places, at least right now, we might even be in opposite places and she'd be calling me and asking me to come down here and wait in line. You just think, sometimes, that one little misunderstanding, you know, just one tiny little thing, like her thinking I was her neighbor and all that results in this, I mean if she had known that was gonna cause her death, you know the simple misunderstanding was going to lead to her death, I know she wouldn't have confused us, and, but really, the other side of it, is if I had moved in there, like I almost did last year, then I really would have been her neighbor and that too, you know my action too, would have saved her life then, because it would have been ok and all that thing about my lawn or my fence would have been about me and I could have fixed that. I mean that is crazy, you know, that is almost unbelieveable and you know, sometimes you just got to wonder, you know, you really have to think about these things and all these interactions because, just like that, the smallest wonders can change the whole trajectory of your life, the smallest confusions can throw your life into a whole other pond and that whole other pond might look so different and it might even get you to throw it all away just like she did.

city gardens

Fuck it, you know, I was all coming up here, earlier, you know a lot earlier, and I was thinking about all the little changes that have been going on, you know, like the fence next to this guy's house, you know this new fence, that just came out of nowhere, just a fence built right there to protect the plants or something, some sort of garden, I think, you know, but that was earlier, and there was the man squatting across the street in some new fenced in community garden, here he was just squatting and digging in the dirt, you know this grown man digging in the dirt, like he had nothing to concern him but the mud and the mud had nothing to concern him with, not at all and, then it was just hitting me like that, you know especially earlier, when I was walking around, back and forth, this whole block, even more than the block, you know past the block, and into some of those parts over, you know, even in Far Rock, where my friend lives, he seeing the same thing, just these little fences starting to come up and protect these plants and a bunch of grown men, grown men, sitting in the area and getting all dirty, getting down into the mud and with the roots and spending all day, like all day on a saturday, out there in their garden, in their new little garden, brought in by a bunch of those people, set up by a bunch of those people, yeah, I know they are from the city, but they aren't from the city, not around here, they don't end up in parts of the city where you look at a face and you know he's seen the city and you know he's from the city, they aren't from this part of the city, not the one we've been coming up in all this time, and so, you know, earlier, maybe even much earlier, I was concerned, I suppose, and I think, maybe, I was even conflicted, right, like I had this feeling that there was something not right about this grown man all fenced in and talking to all these people that have no business walking around back here, and then, you know, you know why I was conflicted, because, you know, the city blocks with the fences and all those things growing up back there are really ok, you know, and earlier, I was thinking it was really ok, it was probably even really worth something, you know, like green is a good color, and it felt good, but man, that is like the poison that we are getting fed, you know right now, right this second, just like that, just in a second, just like that old man squatting in the mud, not thinking there something wrong with that, just in that second, I was, you know converted to thinking like they wanted me to start thinking, thinking its ok if I am squatting in my owh mud, in my own street, like that's ok, but I know that's not ok, I mean that isn't even a little bit ok, that is just wrong, you know the kind of thing that you know is just wrong, that's how it is, and so, you know, really, even after all that color, really--fuck the plants, man, fuck the plants, because I am squatting in my own street, looking like I can't even protect nobody from coming at me, and you know, as I was saying, you know, this was earlier, this was earlier, now, really, fuck it, I mean it, I mean fuck it, there is no way I am gonna run around here, just here, and let my brother or my uncle, you know, let them start squatting and thinking that everything is ok because look at this, I mean, look at this, its a far way from being ok, its pretty fucking far from being all right. Yeah, so fuck it, I said fuck it, and honestly, fuck it because its far from ok, its really pretty far from ok, and like I'll ever really have the chance, really, you know, of trying to understand how messed up it must be, I mean, of really knowing how messed up it must be, of really letting everybody know how messed up things have really gotten, how disconnected I must be, how disconnected all of us here in this city must be, when I am convinced, and I am really convinced, you know, that I have to take out an old man because he's fucking gardening in my neighborhood.

the famous night we first made love

in the morning everything was clearer. Last night -- where were we? I remember there were stars, that the moon "was watery and pale." Robert said this, but he was remembering something altogether different. The moon, even the stars, were stand-ins for the other thing, the thing he didn't mention. That was the whole point.

"How do we substitute the flesh and bones of man for the flesh and bones of his brother?" We were silent at the long table. I don't know what the others were thinking. My morning was clear until I drank too much coffee, and suddenly there were fireworks of thought in my skull.

"That kind of substitution is essentially meaningless," I said. "How could we measure it's success? By which I mean: if man x1 is there and then we see man x2, unless we watch the transition occur we DON'T KNOW IT HAPPENED." Juan nods, and deliberately pauses before looking to Robert, asleep, his glasses a little crooked, his head just a bit above his chest.

"I think that is a very good idea but it needs to be put into proper terms."

So I said x ---> system ---> f(x) so that f(x1) = f(x2) where x1 is man and x2 is his brother, then Robert hollered, and the papers flew around and mixed with the coffee and I watched him tip the table and it headed for the floor. I felt a curious pressure behind my eyes that built until all the differences between me and my colleagues (and the table, falling, the waves of light in the air, the moon) disappeared into a colorful noise, like static but soft, an ocean I suppose, fine, okay, let's just call it that.

the deletion in error, is by chance, only a circle

As a child, I suppose, there is a longing for the perfected face, an image that is not so torn between culture, history, and idealism. That is the face, yes, once sought. But now, I am only here, unable to work, really uninspired to dissect, detail, re-write the already written, merely at the request of the reductionist (who, I am convinced nonetheless, has found certain noble and divine foundations in his work). So, without true joy, I walked here, without valid ambition and not quite alone. No, it would have been years earlier, perhaps even at the very beginning, had I been without help. They did keep me locked in step with the world, a chosen submission, of sorts, but after several attempts, taken in honest effort, the outcomes would not separate themselves from each other, each, even in its completion, a hollow resemblance to the nature of the vacuum, the bright fierce ball, the speed which has no ignition--this is the only act to resemble.

He is, himself, in pieces--literal pieces. He did not dress himself well today and, later, upon inspection, removed the unfortunate pieces of clothing and decoration. I will collect them, he muttered, eventually. I will collect them and re-place them in their proper homes, owned and catalogued.

Is he mad? Of sorts, of course. The resemblance to any hierachy, she mentions, casually (I believe she is sarcastic but almost witless, you know, indifferent to the lunacy that clearly runs all through my family), itself requires a, what would you people call it, a leap of faith? So, technically, his logic is rather faulty to suppose that any resemblance, any actual reflection, no matter how authentic he believes it to be, is merely a subjective relationship--one that holds no absolute divine power (unless, of course, by serious mistake, a critical accident). Given this overall analysis, one that I take no pleasure in delivering, we have no choice but to execute him.

She is mad for analyzing my proposition, he intones, unwilling to accept or even acknowledge his pending death. The only witness in the circle is never in the circle at all. That, I have pretended to understand, means that this long reflection, even at dawn, is simply something I could not possibly comprehend, not unless I remembered not to be involved, which of course, I am destined not to do.

His Accidental Remarks, Nevertheless (Gasp!) were Far From Disappointing

He is undressed and un-moved. It is not like it is anything at all. She dismissed it, earlier, as a fated inconsequential sequence. I have far too many invitations to address, she considered. The ill timing, sure, the gargantuan-ness-ment--ah, dear lone Beast. She spelled Beast out with her fingers and then quickly, rather neatly, though it is never quite neat, suicided. There is only that question and then that answer, if intended to be negative and rather intrusive, surely intrusive, results in a myriad of actions with only one harmful and absolute (general) outcome. We are made of outcomes, he declared, posturing at the base of the staircase, submissive to finer culture and perhaps even ignorant of humanity, no, far from removed, placed in it ever firmly. She has chosen but one outcome that was, I dare say, quite inevitable. Gasp! She is not dead! No, she is dead. An outcome, I must admit, would not venture to suppose it was anything but itself. He had, in truth and in our confidence, been rather irked of late, due to his own inevitable (I dare say again) decline into pedestrian composition, one which he perhaps rightly blamed on maturity. Hmph, he pondered, my own growth in spiritual disposition--though far am I from humane in practice or in philosophical opinion--has now precluded me from witnessing (at least from a subjective stance) the angst, or even the hatred, that so defined my creations. Without it, ever without it now, I am not holding onto anything, not witnessing any hands turn white, and therefore, amongst the sordid lot of pub fare, I am no longer in so much self-disgust nor plagued by heightened self-awareness. I have, yes, of course, in large part due to my spiritual conquest, come to know the regular flow of this great human river, and in it, well, it is only ever cliche, and it is only ever simple, clean, and relaxing. There are, you see, only words for the outside vision of this reality, never the internal vision. But that has made me rather content, nevertheless. Though odd words at such a time (a funeral no less, and a funeral inappropriately attended by the late woman's audacious lover), there was, nonetheless, an air of closure--by what most commoner's supposed--to what was supposed to be a journey and a journey of peace without explanation and without rule. Of course, though his intention was purely ego in drive and in purpose, he nevertheless, succeeded, in such an elegant and direct way, to derive her own life plan--no easy task. We are only, she had once said, in opposition to each other but never in plan or in design. I should not have held onto that rock for so long, he mused later, but of course, most certainly, that was far before he learned that he was on a ball in a vacuum that was merely doing cart-wheels around a stove. Quite metaphoric. Gasp!

spring cleaning

The time had come at last. "No more crying!" Susan pleaded, her eyes shining in the light of the stars. My eyes were just adjusting. "I wasn't crying," I said. "I am tired of all the fighting. I am ready for..."

"For what?"

For things to be different. First you had to find a beginning, and then a middle. The end would find you. Me, all I had was middles. "The woods were lovely dark and deep" but I had no promise. Robert and I played tennis, without a net, and personally I fucking loved it.

"ah it's just laziness, that's what it is" he griped. Somewhere I'm sure above us were stars. Would he rather they burn, or rhyme?

And then there was the moon:

(

"Yourself?" my therapist suggests. "Is that what you're looking for?"

"But I'm right here. How can I be looking for myself when I AM IN FACT MYSELF?"

But it was just rhetorical. No amount of words could console Susan; when she was a baby she swallowed a black hole and we all know how that goes. And me, here, standing with this shovel, not crying, just a little dirt in my eye.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.