Ha!

Amen.

1995

Dear Elie Wiesel,

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Adam Rokhsar

Aborted Entry

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

Right now the sun is setting over Manhattan.

I will go outside.

Good Little Soldier

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

haiku

"Fuck em all."

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

Outside his window gulls moved slowly in the air.

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

you get what you want when you want what you get

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

I beg = a glance

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

I renounce you, father! I will not serve.

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

song for you

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

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

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

your words
and mine
are packets of light

and her words
and mind
are packets of light

and your words
and mind
are packets of light

and your words
and mine
shine and disappear

forever

American Adulthood: Part I

Time


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

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

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

He gets high.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Containments, etc

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

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

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

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

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

Jersey Turnpike, etc

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

starting from the beginning

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

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

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

*

Oh my, oh well

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

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

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

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

untitled

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

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

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

Once I got high and wrote these words:

"lonely lonely who is lonely?

everyone's fingers look like mine--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will keep trying.

Wrangled, Unpredictable Girl

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

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

Tied

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

The marker in the harbor.

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

And then?

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

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

Jungle

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

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

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

Witness, I will not massacre Myself

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

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

The World

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

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

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

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

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

In his gut

In his gut there was a house. We lived there for as long as I could remember; I was born there, and my sister too. I remember the night she was born. I came out of the bedroom and saw Mrs. Fritz at the kitchen table. She also lived in the gut, a few houses down. "Where's Mom and Dad?" I was scared, but she explained that it was time for the baby to come and so Mom and Dad went to the hospital. I had always wanted a brother. When they came back with Jennifer, I was disappointed at first, but she grew on me and anyway it is clear now that good company is hard to find down here in the gut. It must never be taken for granted.

Our house was small, but the yard was big. When we were older we played on the tonsils, slid down the ribs -- we were never allowed to go down too far. "It's dirty," Dad said. "Only peasants like to play down there."

Peasants, or common people, is what Dad called our neighbors, our friends, and pretty much everyone else. Except Mr. Joseph. "Now that is a good man," he would say as Mr. Joseph passed on his way to work. "Without him, none of us could be here."

Mr. Joseph took care of the brain. No one knew exactly what he did, but we could hear him leaving early in the morning for work, not coming back until someone after Jennifer and I were asleep. "I wonder what he does in there," Jennifer said while we lay in bed. "How do you take care of the brain?"

"Maybe give it water, and electricity."

"I never do that to my brain."

"You're brain isn't that big," I said, and laughed.

*

We were 10 and 14 when Jennifer and I decided to follow Mr. Joseph to work. We trailed him from a distance as he climbed the spine-ladder higher and higher, past where the ribcage ends, through slick tunnels that twisted and turned until suddenly we reached the threshold. Sticking close to the wall we watched Mr. Joseph as he slipped his hand through the membrane and passed out of sight. There was a faint humming in the air like a million mouths going like Ohmmmmmm. "I'm scared," Jennifer said.

"Don't be."

"What's it like in there?" I walked towards the membrane and looked back at her.

"Let's go find out."

*

Back at home Dad was pressing dried undigested foodstuff between the pages of heavy books. He had collected for years whatever solids came through that didn't quite get eaten up, and had made beautiful collages by pressing them flat and arranging them in ways that really caught the eye. There was a sudden, sharp pain in his chest, and then a distant rumbling. He caught his breath and looked outside.

*

"Run!" I screamed and grabbed Jennifer's hand. The scorpions were shiny and black and very, very fast. We took a turn as it started to rain. Lightning flashed and illuminated trees bent at odd angles like bodies in pray or in pain, and the sky above our head was vast and terrifying. We heard them click click clicking coming through the OhmmmmmmmOhmmmmmmm droning and for the first time in my life I thought to myself: I could die here. I felt the grass underneath my feet and the rain on my face and on Jennifer's hands, which were wet and starting to slip.

"Don't let me go!"

And then it was the strangest thing but I swear I felt something pass through my heart and when it was gone there was a new feeling in its place, which was not a word or words but the idea in living flesh that I was in fact for the first and last time alive here in this strange multicolored world, smelling this rain and not something else, feeling my sister's hands just like mine slipping out of my fingers and I turned back for only a second before the scorpions swarmed her and she was gone from me forever but for my memory of everything she was and did, which to do this day lives like lightning inside me, electric, white-hot, powering everything I am grateful for, and everything I regret.

*

When I made it back, the house was gone. Mom and Dad had made it out, and we found each other amongst the washed out furniture, kitchen utensils, bedsheets and toys. It took time, but we decided that the only thing to do was move on. Life speeded up, and the years which had taken so slowly seemed to shrink as my days became full of work and people coming and going. Dad passed away and I came by to visit Mom in her little apartment in his heart. We talked about the slower years and cried and I played her piano for a little while, a song Jennifer used to like that went

Here is how you kiss a boy
Here is how you love a girl
That is how you make the world

as the rhythms outside ba-bump ba-bump kept time for as long as we needed, no less, no more.