____It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
____which the night fastens to all the timetables.
______Pablo Neruda
December 15, 2008 by Hollis Brown Thornton
i find it takes a little while for things to settle with me. for arrows to find their mark. in happiness and in... the other thing. a breakup took 10 days. realizing i wasn't in medical school, and i wasn't going back, and i now had nothing took several months. today's took several hours. My first inclination was to
____1. write
anything, anything would have done. but i restrained that. no no no, i'd have nothing worthwhile to say; and i still don't.
____2. buy a bottle of vermouth and get drunk listening to Chet Baker till teary red eyes see red and collapse into a corner singing nothing to myself.
but then i realized that vermouth isn't that strong and you need a double-shot per drink, which i hate. so i revised to
____2b. buy a bottle of rum (dark or light doesn't matter), and get drunk listening to Counting Crows till teary red eyes see Mr. Jones himself and we say to one another: forget about it right? rightright.
but of course i wasn't going to do that. i've never really ever done that, so that wasn't going to happen. i dealt with it the way i always deal with things, i swallow it, and then try and find a way to expel it from my body.
____3. move the kingsize mattress that's been sitting on my floor back into the master bedroom by myself. it's floppy and heavy as all hell and took about 35 minutes to do. left me panting and mildly sweaty and terribly vexed.
i found myself sitting on my (own) bed, doing nothing much (ostensibly, i had come in to check my phone for missed blah blah), over and over in my head repeating
____4. the phrase arrested development resounds in my head. for years now i think about it sometimes. all the circumstantial walls that keep me walking in circles so that all those key milestones are left unmet. and that's what's got me riled up, nothing to do with you, but how it is that my life has been at a virtual standstill for the last 2 years.
amongst this it occurs to me that
____5. the very living of life is a rat-race. like a silly purposeless game since in the end, every quality.attribute.virtue.knowledge we attain fits into a meticulous score-keeping scheme that rates performance against an ideal personal-best scenario. i am uncomfortable with the idea of life itself, (in the deepest sense), because i am uncomfortable with my perfunctorily going from day to day and... well... not really caring.
and now it is apparent that i'm wallowing in self pity. having discarded points 2 and 2b from my mind, and not having ready access to a gym till school starts in 3 weeks, i do the closest thing i can think of:
____6. find myself on the high-way with a fourpack of V (that's a rather delicious Australian energy-drink that all gas-stations have a discount on at the moment) driving strictly to speed limit and drinking one after the other so that 20 minutes later, my hands are shaking and i feel cold but my skin is sweating.
and as the drive continues, i realize i need to occupy myself with mind games to keep myself from drifting into the abyss of nostalgia and self-scrutiny and post-you-what-have-we-learneds which do nobody any good since the thing we learn most from the past is what Joyce reminds us history is a nightmare of myself from which i'm trying to wake (and at this point:
____7. though appreciate the good advice everyone gave me, realize that i am the memory-machine, and that perhaps tempermentally, perhaps mental-erroneously, i cannot forgive the past, hate the past, and hate myself for the past, and hate the past for the past, and hate the world for the past. (also, i decided that i would eventually have to find a way to remedy this preoccupation,
____7b. thought about my mother crying as she read my novel, and saying, oh baby... it is not right to remember soo much. forget it. forget it all. we all love you, but for your sake, learn to be someone else.
notice i'm driving markedly faster, and am headed towards Ikea, which is a great place to lose yourself and become confused about other things; but i'm still 30 minutes away. i decide to play Sholeh's the Golden 11 game. (pick your top 11 bands, and your single favorite song per band). 10 minutes later when this was finished, i decide to add the word why. (as we all know, i'm a wordy type, so my reasons are most often lyrical).
____8. THE GOLDEN 11, a list (in non-prioritized order)
__- Bon Iver, re: stacks
why?
the moment he says and your love is safe with me and every fragile thing about that is obvious. and everything to do with permanence, and loss and safeguarding 'us' from everything that seeks to divide 2 back into 1's.
__- the Deftones, Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
why?
if the title isn't enough,
_____________i don't care where just far
_____________________________(away)
_____________i don't care where just far
_____________________________(away)
shouted over and over.
__- Big Runga, Gravity
why?
it's the perfect love song. the most honest, attainable. a perfect symbiosis of music and words, when i hear
If gravity let us go
We would all go flying
And I'll meet you somewhere
in the milky night
Away past the satellites
i actually feel lighter. i drift away. somewhere where all the love i've ever felt still lives, and still breathes, and still sits quietly and watches Tameeka smoke in the rain on my sister's green swing. and sees Vanessa for the first time on the 345 bus... and the other stuff.
__- Bjork, Bachelorette
why?
Love's a two way dream & I'm your one way street
__- Radiohead, (previously has been: Exit Music, Idioteque, Life in a Glasshouse, Where I End and You Begin, but is currently: Videotape
why?
cause. i. know. to.day. has. been. themost. perfect. day. i've. ever. seen.
__- Nina Simone, Don't Smoke in Bed
why?
most poetic lyrics, simplest music imaginable, saddest song known to man, poetry is truth, raw and unbridled.
__- Frou Frou & Imogen Heap (same bunch of people anyway), Hide and Seek
why?
WWWWwwwwwhhhhhheeerre are we?
__- Kanye West, Never Let Me Down
why?
J.Ivy's BOMB monologue that ends: Cuz whenever I open my heart, my soul, or my mouth
A touch of God reigns out
__- Blonde Redhead, the Dress
why?
People hate you when you're changing
__- Calla, Tijerina
why?
after the intro, he whispers.rasps, almost inaudibly, i think i'm coming back home. it's safer if i stay close to home. and suddenly there are a million stories that start and end with those two affirmations.
__- the Shins, Caring is Creepy
why?
the lead in to gold teeth and the curse for this...
and now, i'm done at Ikea. i'm driving home.
____9. windows down. windows up. music up. music down. noise. louder. static. cram it all in there. there can't be thinking if there's no room to think. windows down. music up. louder. it's not distorting yet, make it distort. yeesss. yesss. make a real mess of it q.
and i arrive home. i can't be home. this isn't home. there is no home.
____10. i close the windows and sit staring out at the lightning storm, repeating to myself over and over the year of everything that wasn't , the year of everything that wasn't , the year of everything , year everything , everything wasn't, year wasn't
____11. i'm at Chad's playing Resident Evil 4 for no less than 5 hours, while drinking tea and watching his two kittens play and then fall asleep cuddling. we aren't talking much. time flies. it's late. i know as soon as i leave
____12. i think alot about the Great Gatsby, i think about that stereotypical male yearning to 'catch-up', to be made worthy, to be approved of... a kind of thing that doesn't go away after even decades. I wonder where Fitzgerald must have discovered it. When i read it at 16, that aspect made no sense to me. as i grow older, i seem to settle more and more with the elegiac Gatsby, trying to win back affections that don't deserve him. then from behind the corner it comes back, a variation on Joyce: boats against the current, ceaselessly borne into the past
i start to realize maybe i'm running.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Things You Do.Think On Days When You Hear News Like I Heard News Today, A List:
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Peripheral Love Stories, Mikrokosmos
__And the coolness of your smile is
__stirringofbirds between my arms;but
__i should rather than anything
__have(almost when hugeness will shut
__quietly)almost,
______________your kiss
______EE Cummings
untitled by .littlegirlblue
____i.
my shoulders hurt, so i think about that. imagine striations of muscle. it's not sunny, but the humid air seems to lick at me and i'm sweating. the recent callouses on my palms protect me and the shovel feels fine in my hands as i take spoonfools to feed the wheelbarrow. i like the sound it makes, each thrust into the massive dirt mound. i like its textures. i imagine i'm a coal-miner. a geologist on a far-flung planet. a man digging a grave. he's still talking. he pants in between sentences, sometimes mid-sentence, but he keeps talking. i'm just workin man, just saving up, just saving up ('what for?' i offer; as long as he's talking, he's not asking questions) my brother's married, ya know? he's got three kids. he makes a good living. he has a life, that's what life's all about right? (he stopped working all together, holds the shovel steady in his hands, gathers himself up as though he had something lightning to say) a house?... a car at very least. i just wanna have something. anything. (to show for myself. Now i stop what i'm doing and look at him. i remember him when he was 13. and at 25 i say 'i know that feeling brother'. and abruptly turn and push my wheelbarrow on before my words have a chance to reach the far bank.
____ii.
someone's got their ipod connected. there's a mad rush to show each other up with songs. a hustle and bustle as people say yeah, but have you heard it live? or yeah, but have you heard Aimee Mann's cover? someone says, dude, you have to check this out and three guitar strums in, someone from the back says firmly: no. __not this song. turn it off. __now. (and everyone's heard it anyway, so they skip on and argue about top-5 lists), and she says quietly to herself, i don't want to hear that song ever again.
____iii.
he's just sitting there.
i know right
he doesn't smoke, or anything, he just... reads
who does that right?
and drinks his coffee, and reads
(of all things)
there's something up with him
totally, there's something totally up with him no one does that
no one
you think he has no friends?
maybe he's new in town
could be.
could be anything.
[look at each other, in a moment come to the same realization, and burst out laughing]
____iv.
and after all that time, all he can think to say is, i wear glasses now. and she nods, and says without humor, yeah, i can see them on your face.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Possibly the Best Evening of 2008
Before:
(those mounds are, going anticlockwise from the right: poetry, literature in general (mostly novels, but also short story collections), music and art are up against the wall, classics (12 o'clock), non-fiction, Bahai books are on the bed, academic is at 8 o'clock with the very intimidating (and misleadingly named) Statistical Thermodynamics, an Introduction at the top)
One Hour Later:
That's most of it done. But I keep finding odds and ends around the place. The row at the bottom is going to be magazines, notebooks, etc. but I need to buy some boxes for it first.
I am telling you all this, because it was quite possibly the most fun I've had in the last 13 months.
Those of you who have books on my shelf, inscriptions, signatures, with loves... be it Anjie's Baha'i World, Everything is Illuminated, a very special copy of Prayers and Meditations, Neruda's short but incredible einte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, the soo thoughtful birthday present (Entropy Pieces)... and of course Luis's "and all else worth living for" I am glad to have you all near me again. in a way. and to hold you in my hands.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
At Starbucks on Christmas Day, a letter to Ashtree
_So to one neutrall thing both sexes fit,
__Wee dye and rise the same, and prove
__Mysterious by this love.
______Donne
sonatine: iii, tommy oshima
Dear(est) A-Digg,
____In recent times Christmas has become a day of exile. A day for departure lounges and solo-coffees. A day to measure the relativistic duration of these long Decembers. Like a bookmark, everything they hold in place... new names, like yours, and words I never knew before, and dates and moments and objects... Salvatore Ferragamo half-boots, new ties and the funerals and weddings I bought them for... and the occasions I wore them to. December is a dam. A hard, long, cement wall to try and hold back in place the 11 months prior.
____I had hoped to write a great novel this year. I have not done that. I haven't even written a decent short-story. In bursts I wrote well enough didn't I? The miniatures I display here aren't all bad are they? I only say this because I'm an autobiographicalist. It's what I do: write the autobiographies of moments and daydreams and partial memories and the blurred, deformed relics of history. If I write bad, perhaps I have lived it bad. (lived it wrong). I fear bad writing makes me a graceless man living a jarring graceless life. Maybe it's true, considering all the sweat, shed hair, dirty post-shower water, spit, groans, nail-clippings, trembling 3am fingers, hearty laughs, unslept blackened eyes, rare moments of transcendental prayer, the friction and inertia of hugs, repeated curses (over and over), all those things it takes to build a year, how can that ever be graceful? I suppose looking like magazine models floating through airports calmly, perfectly pressed trousers even after a 12 hours flight, no beads of sweat or stubble on chins, I suppose not everyone can have that.
____What do we do with all this time? Sometimes I think of it and I'm elated. inspired. relieved. Other times... frightened. Right now I'm a little... bland. Time has turned, this year, into a muddy haze of static white noise. I myself, my life too. Time, future, all of it, a translucent substance, a blurry half-forgotten memory-photograph. I see it that way, everything floating, nothing solid, nothing pinned down. nothing certain. I like it this by the way. It makes it easier to move around. There are no right angles left in my world, everything I touch is smoothe. ____Can things exist as music?, half-formed, temporary as vibrating air. Did you know light is just an oscillating electromagnetic wave? Similar concepts have been proposed about matter. Perhaps I am an oscillating field. A temporary anomaly, a ripple along time's clear lake. Perhaps I am just vibrating air, nothing at all. A balloon, a thin membrane holding in some air. (I like that idea). I like the idea of being a set of variations on the theme of clouds.
____It is a Thursday. It feels like a Sunday. Sunday seems to have invaded most of this week.
____I have not been in love this year. A whole loveless year. I'd be tempted to proclaim a loveless year a year not worth living. On the other hand, there are only soo many natural disasters a person can endure in one lifetime.
____The interesting thing is, the way this year has wound down. So gently. Like the last Shostakovich symphony, percussion and a celesta for a full two minutes. not with a bang but a whimper. Like playing, round & round & round & round and all . fall . down . And here we lay, panting and smiling and looking left and right. Gol says I am "stamping out the last embers of 2008"... honestly, I thought they were just getting done stamping me out.
____Anniversary dates are a little... depressing for me. Reflection days (birthdays, New Years, etc) are always a little overcast. Each of my year's is about 2 or 3 in typical human time. Too much happens in my life. Too much stimulation. You should measure me in dog years, that accounts for the discrepancy in my age. Yet despite all the coffee and people-watching, I can't determine the weight of 2008. It is too heavy a year, a singularity point (a point where you must divide by zero - it means your division explodes to ∞... it's what happens with gravity at the singularity point of black holes), the fulcrum between past and future. it is the year that changed everything (and every thing is alot). it was soo wonderful and soo miserable, that's what makes it different- most years, in the final assessment are reduced to 'a good year', 'it was an ok year', 'it was a pretty terrible year'... but 2008... is the worst year ever and the best year ever simultaneously and i can't disassemble it back into blocks and triangles and simple geometric moments. the oceanic vastness of it, it has submerged every doorway, it is refracting the light of the past in new ways, it is the massive dragon in the living room, it nudges pawns, and recomputes all future vectors. i am lost without this year. and i am lost because of it. i hate everything that's ever happened because of this year. and everything that is going to happen in the future is because of this year. everything i hate about life is exemplified in this year, and everything i love about it. i just can't find a way to condense this year into a single word that isn't: 2008?, uhh, fu&^ man. I want to love it. I do. When with time I drift away from it a little (my face slammed into this glass right now it is a bit hard on the perspective-eye) I know I'll come to see its intricacies. It's beautiful stains and marks and the intelligence of its brutality. Right now, I can't commit to 'loving it', or being 'grateful for it', because 2008 is a year that makes me wretch. It is a year that took me from a passionate hatred of life to a... dreamy aloofness. a sort of genuine resignation, the kind that makes one feel... constantly floating, constantly flying, constantly falling... (i exist in space between stars). 2008 was a year I dreamt of dead grandfathers... which for some reason, summarizes everything to me.
____And, of course, the jury has been debating whether it was indeed the year of/for miracles (the jury never decided if it was to be the year of miracles, or a year for miracles). I assume G-Bomb will argue till her dying breath it most certainly was, which is perfectly in character and not the least bit surprising. I don't know what Monz has to say about it... if she's ready to make her call. As for me... I suppose it's time to make up my mind. I think it was a year of silence. a year of anticlimax. a year of waiting for massive things to happen, so much so, that we missed them when they did (L'attendant Godot). i think it was a year of minute micro-changes. a year where insects ate the foundations of every building right beneath our feet without us seeing. (and a year where gardens bloomed outside that we forgot to notice we were soo busy staring at the sky hoping for rain). they were the sort of miracles that pass you by in hallways and elevators and walk right in front of you as you sit at Starbucks. you look, fail to absorb, then look away. it was a year of vampire weekends and perfectly nuanced monday afternoons. they were the sort of miracles that are sculpted out of wind, the shape of clouds, the shadows on grass, the kind you won't understand till you're a septuagenarian, where, as you sit alone and try and fathom your crumbling withered body, you'll stare at family portraits and the dusted faces of paintings you don't have the strength to wipe off, and little morsels of food gathering in the corners of your kitchen you just ignore, and you finally grasp (grasp) in an awesome awkward humility the mutidunious miracle of that train-wreck.
____and until then, you sit at Starbucks on Thursdays that are really Sundays, alone, which you prefer because your thoughts can't be put into spoken words, staring at every-other-woman-wearing-a-maxi-dress and brown wrap up sandals, and children confusedly looking around, and uncaring teenagers checking their cell phones... and scribble in your notebook and people hate you because you are taking up a four-seater-table all on your own. and you sweat and layers of your skin peel off and the frowns on your forehead deepend. you grow more silent and if you close your eyes and reach out your hands can sense the longitude and latitude of wind, and the humidity in the air makes it thick so when you're thirsty you breathe it in, and you try and forget the sound of the alarm that woke you up at 3:45am for months so you could start work at 4, and the dreams of all your yesterdays suddenly start to dwindle, sadly walk across
London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many,
and you feel that, on the other side of this moody afternoon, on the other side of your blurred misvision, on the other side of your most earnest efforts and most dreaded failures, several billion stars are still burning, and that if you concentrate- can feel their tingles of heat on your arms, pinpricks of light, like being kissed by an invisible ant, spots of rapture, the tiniest imaginable slithers of an otherworld, a sense of continuity, the undeaded part of you that after hours without speaking, suddenly surprises you by exhaling a gush of air that says it all, that releases you out of the cage of yourself, and there you sit, air staring at air, anomaly to anomaly, unreflective surface to unreflective surface, and everything you love.hate.cannot understand meets its moment and its death... and time which now means nothing, and victory and failure which now mean nothing, and love and wretched hate which now mean nothing and the lost artform of being human, is redeemed.
perhaps not all miracles are sensed.
much love
q
The Dynamics of Hope, the Memory Machine, and Stages of Resignation: 2008, Some Points of Summary (kinda)
And the book says: "We may be through with the past... but the past is not through with us"
____Quiz Kid Donnie Smith
untitled, by Isa Marcelli
____i.
a spot of rain lands on my elbow. i look up from my notebook. A steady rain cools the air and glazes the sidewalk, freshening up fluorescent hues. A large family sit at the table besides me, the children climbing all over vacant chairs and tables and one another. My coffee's already stopped steaming. A teenage girl kisses her little sister on the forehead and walks back to her seat. My headphones are loud so i can't hear much.
____so, 2008, this is how, where, when, you've chosen to end.
____ii.
the last time i saw you was today, a year ago, did you know that? Probably not. I remember everything about you, especially the last page (all of them).
____(finally the hug stops. the car's parked on the most ridiculous incline i feel like an astronaut) She's filled it with all my stuff because i was hugging you and yellow lights and white bricks (and i'm sure a part of me knew it wasn't a 'new(est) beginning' like you said, but the new(est) (final) ending).
____i remember the air and the quiet and Mona's patient face. In the end, as though realizing i'd been holding my breath (all year) i put my hands to my lips and kissed my fingers and touched your cheek. you cried softly, it wouldn't even have disturbed a cat. i got in the car parked vertically. a voiced communication with a space-station somewhere was not heard, and at 3am Christmas Day, we ended something we thought we were rejuvenating.
____a quarter of an hour later, Monz says: how you feeling?
__- just like skin. i left everything that matters behind.
__- ... i'm glad you got in (finally
__- ... i almost didn't.
__- i know. _that's what __why __i'm saying , said ...
_______anyway.
__- anyway.
____iii.
__Gol: Q, just... you have to be patient, really it kills me to-
_ __Q: um, excuse me, i'm plenty patient, i define patience, i own it, i invented it-
__Gol: you're right, you're right, but still Q... i'm telling you, it just feels like a year for miracles -
_ __Q: fu&^ing fu&^ing shut-up with that fu&^ing rant about god-damned screw-themselves miracles. you and monz and you're damned miracle-sighting-expeditions!
__Gol: ... there's a long way to go yet Q. All i'm saying, all i'm saying, keep it simple. look at your feet. plant the next step. leave the universe to the universe.
_ __Q: ...
__Gol: ...
_ __Q: that's good advice.
__Gol: [exhale.sigh]
____iv.
i hang up the phone. i'm quiet. i reek of silence, it emanates from me so Mar and Courtney just stare, What? What?
__- i gotta go
__- gotta... go where?
__- LA.
__- what? no!. Q!, no! you're almost happy. almost happy is a big improvement, you're not-
__- my grandfather passed away.
i walk to my notebook open to the page that my marker's marked, fumble for the pen that i've been kicking around on the carpet all week and write:
i_ am_ too_ not_ r e a d y_ .
____v.
her face turns blue: Q, you said you'd stay a bit longer... just to make sure of... things. __you said you would. __you said. _[i'm scared].
i know baby, but the price difference is over a thousand dollars. just for an extra 2 weeks. it's going to be scary to live alone no matter when it starts... so, let's just say it starts 2 weeks sooner... it'll be hard for us too, no matter when.
__(she cried) ____(mom cries) ____(i look around. my lips are too dry to speak. i repeat fu^& and ya'Baha'u'llapa in various combinations for the next 14 hours trying to find words.strength.answers)
____vi.
the LA sky is always blue. never a cloud. it's eerie. The sun is heavier than any rain. I sit, topless, because mom insists it'll help with my 'depression'. I listen to Mozart and close my eyes and try to disappear. (open?) (damn. no. still here) repeat. Each patch of blackess is a noisy concoction of names . dates . planes . snow . trains . Eman's hug . Haifa . being lost . words . answers . wind . half mumbled prayers/curses (in the same breath) . dreams of death and dead people . did i kill the future? . (o p e n !, god, i can't take that)
____at 4am i finally get out of bed and make myself a bowl of cereal. eat slowly. my step-dad comes out the bedroom.
__'you're up?'
__'never sleep. __what about you?'
__'jet-lag. i'm still on Australia time.'
__(nod)
__'something on your mind?'
__'everything.'
__'is that all?' (smile)
__' everything is alot'
and i walk (with a limp) down the boulevard at 2am with my headphones on. I fell playing basketball, again. I stop in front of of the bookshop and stare at the mannequin-head-installation-art the hippie owner's boyfriend made (she tells me about it 2 weeks later when i finally pop in and buy Stravinsky, a Critical Survery and the second volume of Virgina Woolf's A Common Reader essays). I walk on, hands in pockets. I pass the closed carwash. the mexican food stall. the supermarket that's open till midnight- sometimes 1am. and what is life that i should find myself walking down Santa Monica Blvd. at 2am listening to Russian rock songs?
____vii. (your love will be safe with me)
__you: and... the thing... come up with , have been thinking...
_ __q:__________just say what's on your mind. we're beyond this.
__you: we shouldn't talk anymore.
______not at all.
__ _q: wanna... discuss this?_,_ or have you made up your mind?
__you: _no. __made up.
_ __q: _ok.
__you: __ok?
_ __q: i disagree; _but if that's what you've come up with and-
__you: you brought this on, ok?, y o u . Don't pass this off on me. (your actions)
_ __q: __Yeah. __sure. __ok.
__you:
_ __q:
__you: you'll be ok?
_ __q: _____________... yeah.
__you: ok.
_ __q: __bye. __look after yourself. __be well.
__you: that's harsh.
__ _q: that my dear, was hardly harsh. _(in comparison. __(given the circumstances.
__you: [sigh]
______you'll be ok?
__ _q: yes. stop asking. ___take care.
__you: Bye Qdudus.
_ __q: Bye _ _ _ _ _.
(and the rest is silence)
____viii.
there's a picture of it Ashley took. four of us walking in a line. i have my silly hat on and a half-unbuttoned shirt. Liam has his towl around his neck and he holds it at both ends. Andy stares over and is listening, Em is half amused.
i arrive home smelling of sand and the sound of geological time-frames.
mom opens the door: what kind of friends do you keep who have time to go to the beach at 2 in the afternoon on a Monday? (i smile)
____ix.
Martha's the only person who's heard me cry.
____x.
(i stare for 20 minutes at cars and people passing. At the end of it, under all the dust and smiling teeth: how do you forgive the past?, i can't do it, how do you do it?, how do you do it?, how do you do it?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Telefon Tel Aviv you are the worst thing in the world (for me): (nocturne)
i close my eyes and reach out a hand,
stretch an inch farther maybe there's a wisp of hair i can't see in the dark that my fingertips will find,
eyes straining the car moans its way home, my vision's blurred so the yellow green tangerine bright red lights look like planets as i drift through empty narrow spaces between solar systems
and the other side of happiness is
__ (memory twice removed)
i have discovered hollow emotions - inchoate versions, phantasms of the real thing:
all petal and no scent,
i float through fractions of happiness and loneliness and midlightness and lead-heavy-weighted.ness (and grass is what's left of fingertips that stretched too long and found nothing,
besides me a car passes, with a mannequin that stares straight ahead, drifting shadow of a nocturnal bird too high to see, jagged conjunctions of metal and streetlight and heads tilted just off axis to accommodate dreamtime masquerades and one handed driving,
youth has delivered its true crown at last:
(today's whimpering crawl)
and the mannequin, turns its androgynous head and mouths to me: could this be life?,
and i shake my head in return, mouth back (lipped conversations that air can't touch): how would we know?
(what's that remembering the feel of sunlight with your eyes closed at noon?)
(you are the sun, when the sun has gone away)
nighttime. geological forces press against oceans and caverns and solo-manned bedrooms,
static torque and balanced weights too heavy to count: moments that muster their own gravity (stars slow their jog and look back over their shoulder, occasionally reach out a fired wrist
and then there comes no sound,
no motion,
and dreams spill like clownsuits and droplets of wet oil from rainbows,
and tired eyes find graspless places where fatigue makes no sense, and words aren't wasted to attempt to say what skydives forgot to describe:
(far-away a phase-difference is starting to practice it's artful machination
i have to dance my stone back into beating
________________________(save the last chance for me
Friday, December 19, 2008
2008... an assortment of random thingisms
____I long to talke with some old lover's ghost,
____Donne
david foldvari
____1. confession.
Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time makes me mad. it was the argument she always used against me. and i'd say, no dear, this has nothing to do with love, or with time, it simply is not a good plan... it just doesn't add up. see? and she'd say: no. (just like that, she had a way of saying it sforzando, like those Brahms orchestral chords that sound like jabs) no, this is about love and time, because if this is love, nothing is too much trouble (nothing doesn't leave room for your exceptions), and you'll just have to make the time. if you loved me you would. and i'd think to myself: i do love you, but love is not an excuse to do stupid things and justify extraneous subjects and courses... love is not immune to the forces of trouble and time... and i was right. in the end, trouble and time were more always there, and were too much trouble, and where love is is in a vacuum space that alleverything can encroach on. and eventually, no one knows where love is. love is not in a where.
____2. q music awards
Best albums of 2008:
For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver
Invol2ver, Sasha
Lupe Fiasco's the Cool, Lupe Fiasco
Oracular Spectacular, MGMT
Cove, A Weather
Third, Portishead
In Rainbows, Radiohead
Best single songs of 2008:
Re: Stacks, Bon Iver
Kids, MGMT
Destroy Everything You Touch (Sasha's Invol2ver Remix), Ladytron
Oh My Stars, A Weather
Videotape, Radiohead
Album from 2007 that's still most cool:
23, Blonde Redhead
Silent Alarm, Bloc Party
____3.
whatever this is, this life of starting work at 7am, and cut hands and bruised knees, and working till 8-9pm... this life of coughing up sawdust and dreaming (literally) of angles and gyprock and circular saw techniques, whatever it is... could this be happiness?
____4.
i have little to write about these days. it is not writer's block, so much as... writer having found himself in a state of bland whiteness where nothing presses itself as a need to be written. social contact has all but disappeared and is limited to my one friend, with whom i sit and watch whatever episode we're up to of Weeds, and since i cannot write (or read), sitting at the Starbucks at the corner of broadbeach and shamelessly people watching for no more than 45 minutes because at that point i start to feel lonely and leave. and yet, this beautiful, pale sense of nothing.whatever.ness that makes everything so ok it's simply... not even a thing anymore. i am desiccating life.
____5. (at the hardware store:
__Q: does this silicon dry translucent?
lady: whahuh?
__Q: um ... transparent, is it see-through
lady: oh. see-through, i had no idea what you were saying
__Q: yeah. translucent is a word that means see-through.
lady: why don't you just say see-through?
__Q: because see-through is a phrase that people who didn't know about the world translucent invented.
lady: oh. well, that includes me then doesn't it?
__Q: yes. it does.
lady: this silicon will dry... transparent?, what was that word?
__Q: translucent.
lady: what's transparent then? why invent two words for the same thing? hey?! Hey?! (feeling smart)
__Q: actually, a transparent substance you can see clearly through, you'd be able to see disctict images. translucent substances allow light to pass, but any images will be blurry. so it kinda lets some light pass through. i just used transparent as a rough synonym because i thought it might get the idea across.
lady: ok, i have to stop talking to you, you just said another weird word.
__Q: yeah. i definitely need to move.
lady: huh?
____6.
dear people who read this blog whoever you are:
in the next bracket of time, i anticipate further trouble coming up with writing ideas. so. should you have a topic you'd like to see me treat, or... want to collaborate on something or whatever, email me, comment, get in touchy touchy. send me essay topics. send me words or quotes that might trigger something. blah blah blah. if you don't, i'll eventually sit down and (losing control) will say everything it is i have to say about the year 2008 (think of it as a closing address). here's an abridged version: mother-fu*&ing die! die! die!. so. save us both from that.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
3 dreams of my dead mother, and other tales
____from Portrait of a Lady, Eliot
1974, pierre wayser
____1.
i like rooms like this. dark grey walls, it's slate i think. a hard bench in dark wood, with moderate sized slats and empty spaces in between. a simple rectangular shape. several of them. i sit amongst people in fitted black trousers, and oh-soo-elegant cocktail dresses. we are huddled together on these benches, people facing to their left or right, no one straight ahead. my field of vision is encased in somebody's head, so it moves and i see everything from the vantage point of eyes. it is a strange place to be. (the reason your own voice sounds strange to you is because of the interference that comes from your cranium's vibrations when you speak. it's a feedback mechanism that makes the way you sound different from the inside). there are lights, but i can't tell where they are located. there is popcorn. the head i am stuck in is in the kitchen. the head moves towards the right, out from behind the kitchen-counter, but not back towards the group straight ahead. it walks keeps walking, and there, a square shaped room with one wall made entirely of glass, through the glass i see my grandfather, 10 months (now) dead, sitting like a patient in a waiting room. his arms are not crossed - as he was accustomed to doing in life - they are by his sides. he wears the same bland khaki pants, grey plastic jacket. his hair little curly ringlets. he looked as he did when i was 8. 9. 10. (he looks as he does when i dream of him). i see him and freak. freak. i (consciously) get excited frightened uncertain... i haven't seen him since february. i've only seen him once. though asleep my body tightens. within the dream i fall to the floor and squirm like an animal, saying mom mom mom, it's your dad. there is no response to my excitement.
in the morning, i brush my teeth. feel comforted that my grandfather came around to check on me, even if he was as quiet in death as he was in life. (and that's when i realize it. it was my mother's funeral).
____2.
grass at dusk. that muddy mercury color. patchy like old men's hair. a tall high swing. three bodies, shadows, only partially filled in with matter. one on the swing, one pushing, a third off to the side (that's me).
inside an amphitheater. lines that are cut boldly, and shadows that inhabit their spaces and are too disciplined to move off their shapes.
outside, as the sky grows a demon-blue, then a soothing shade of black, then darker still. a cement bench that copies the color of the sky. i cannot sense its cold, or its hardness. i cannot sense anything other than i am sitting there.
voices carry in the amphitheater. i haven't a clue what they're saying.
outside, there's speaking.
____3.
i'm left with my sister. she has to pee. i have to get her to a bathroom. this is not uncommon. it is not uncommon to see me running through shopping centres and wedding parties and airports pushing my wheelchair as we both laugh (and are concerned).
it is dark. there are soo many bridges joining these buildings. for a while (as i think through sleep), i figure i am on a university campus at night. it is perhaps an open-night. when i was 9 my parents took me to see a cultural show at Moorepark College. my dad was a teacher there. perhaps it is there. when i was 10, we went to UCLA. i remember only the shape of the outline of the tree's shadow on the grass i had my lunch on. to me UCLA was the shadow of that tree. But for now, it is night. and i run, pushing my sister.
now with dad and Sahar. we are in an windowless house. there are sheets covering some furniture. an old piano that resembles a mean old lady and i won't go near it. my face has a sneer glued-onto it. it is dusty. dad is there. it is his dust-heap. sahar is there but i can't see her. an old wooden wardrobe goes high up towards the higher up ceiling. there's an old sound system up there, mummified in its own dust.
____(morning)
reza's standing by my bed. when i open my eyes i see my light-green-and-white-striped pajama pants. he's saying something but i don't hear him,
- i deamt that mom died.
- what?
- i dreamt that mom died.
- ... uhm
- three nights in a row.
- ... it's not necessarily a bad thing ... it ... could mean your relationship is changing ...
- [it's made me feel really lonely. and a little uncomfortable. we're a team. a team. we've faught wars together. see?
- ... blah blah blah blah blah (etc)
- [and, why do i feel soo lonely? i'm happy when people die. happiest
- ... and recently you're soo focussed on what you want and you're own life and so maybe ...
- [but this feeling ... and this last one ... it was like dad was raising us. also, he wasn't. i was raising us. and then dad. and then me. running across bridges looking for bathrooms. and then moving through dusty rooms looking at yet more dusty boxes, and that thick carpet that moulds around your feet like sand
- ... so i wouldn't really worry about it, to answer your question, no, i haven't had any such ...
- [but all we've gone through. i don't make sense to anyone but mom. not even she gets me, but at least she gets the history of it ... not really, but she was there for half the wounds, and she gave the other half, and even Sahar can't fathom it because half the wounds come from contorting ourselves to manage her
- ... also we have the electrician who might come today, but he might come tomorrow, but we have to be on the lookout
- [i always thought i'd be really happy for her, but... i'd be devastated. i never knew i would be. but i would be.
- ... and since they're emptying the construction bin out the front, maybe we should remove all the carpets too - oh, and with the pool, what was the size of the tile we've
- [when did we become a team?
____(evening)
i looked at your photo for a little while. it was there i looked. also i kind of thought it might be there, and so made sure to peek through. it was (there). i looked. i feel like i can translate your smiles better than anyone. maybe i can't. maybe i have an outdated dictionary. maybe there's a new edition of you out i don't know about. no doubt. i can't hold you up to the light to make sure, but i sensed a translucence. watch out for that ok?, first its translucence, then it's outright transparency. if you can't be a shadow there's nothing else but a cloud. i liked the feel of you in my hands, try to maintain some hold on matter. i don't know what you're fake-smiling about. but i feel like i do. history has its own makeshift mythology for everything. we kid ourselves into believing our Aramaic. i can't sense anything of you through this picture. it is like looking at a lake, why do we do that? (we do though).
i'll be honest about this too:
i think alot about when we meet next. how it'll happen. there's no doubt it will. people keep taking apart sections of the world and folding them up real tight and jamming entire continents back into the same cardboard box. it's getting smaller and. it's just a ticking machine thing before we do. bump. see. again. which is fine it's fine, i just wonder if i can stand up straight when it happens. whether i'll be half-formed or fully formed. whether i'll have developed a spine and fingertips and language by then. embryology takes forever.
i always feel like your life is better. like... it always just worked.works.will work for you. there's a glamour to it. an ease. life misfits sometimes. it's an awkward dress on some. doesn't quite make sense. like me. always stumbling onto buses and trains, beads of sweat on my forehead from the stress of being late. going to the mall unshaven and messy hair and my thumb still bleeding from the hacksaw blade. caught off-guard. not sure what to say back. carrying too much laundry in one basket so my uncool slightly-pink underwear is falling out everywhere. if the air is hot and humid i have a rash that comes. i suppose magazine cutouts never can work with
____(later evening)
i sniff the air trying to sense the vibe. i'm no shaman, nothing makes itself known to me.
i'm scared to sleep i just lay here and read the Ikea catalogue.
i haven't felt this lonely in months.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Doppelgänger
In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.
Lichtzeichnungen by Andreas Nicolas Fischer
q. __(#1.) __(screw up your courage)
i never left haifa. i woke up that morning. i got dressed. i sat by my bed and looked at my bags all packed and ready to go. i tapped my knees together. then i stood up, unzipped my blue bag (that because of this, would no longer break in Prague a year later) and took out a few socks. i made a little mound of them in a corner. i took out my black notebook, turned to the first page, and ripped it out. i walked to my pin-up board and pinned it up. the first page; __not the last.
q. __(#2.) __(run Orestes, run!)
i left Martha's key at the hiding place she showed me and walked into the city. i sat at the crumpet shop with a refillable mug of gourmet earl-grey tea. i stared at the pink neon lights of the strip club opposite with my eyes out of focus, so it could have been Las Vegas or toxic flamingos i was looking at, wouldn't have made any difference. i payed the $1.37 i owed, and walked out. boarded the train, asked for the farthest stop. when i got off there were few tall buildings and it was windy. i walked over and asked for a bus somewhere. they said i was at the wrong stop, had to go back into the city, go to the bus terminus and go from there. i shook my head and started walking away, for no reason, in no direction at all. i kicked a white rock for 45 minutes to pass the time. i carried my brown leather overnight bag on alternating shoulders. an hour later a car pulled up besides me, asked me if i knew where i was going. not LA i said. why not?
- my grandfather died. there's a funeral on.
- isn't that a reason to go.
- no.
- why not?
- because in my notebook i wrote i am too not ready.
he nods when i say this.
- i'm going to Carrick, ya know where that is?
- no.
- it's -
- don't tell me __ doesn't matter
(i'm getting in the car as i say this)
- what'll you do when you get there?
- try and get as far away as i can.
- how long will you keep that up?
- till it's silent.
q. __(#3.) __(gatsby)
i am ___that's ____if i see ___________need _____ __bear (to) _____ _please.
un ___ _why __ _ _you . ___ ____ __ __more _______bare ________ _please.
(still)_ _ i worry ___i don't : __ ___ ____time __ __ ___open ears _ _ ___please.
sure. _ _ ____ __ _ be not a failure ,still) _(all say that)_ to willing sirens. _ see?
q.__ (#4.) __(the wasteland)
he didn't say much at the airport. he looked thin. i took him to eat, he nibbled a little and forked his food around a lot. finally, he looked up, and worriedly said that he couldn't stomach much more. i said it's good to have you home son, he smiled graciously. thanks he responded. when he walked in, he stood in place and stared at the piano for a while. finally he nodded at me, walked into his room and shut the door behind him. he hasn't been out in over a day... i'm not sure what to say to him, and the thing is
q. __(#5.) __(the Eumenides)
2008 ends.
and what did you do in 2008 Mr Naohkart?
i ran and ran.
where to?
i'm not sure yet.
q. __(#6.) __(new years)
rest in peace our son, who fell asleep at the wheel, and with limp resting body joined silence, translucency, and eventually: transparency - since his eyes were closed, his last memory of this earth will be ... whatever his dreams had led him to. blackness. blackness and silence.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
a long december (na na na naaa)
____If you think that I could be forgiven...
____i wish you would
_______Counting Crows
2 December 2008, Amy Sahba
courtesy of Every Morn and Eve
it does seem to curve back onto itself like a wave, doesn't it? december 2006. december 2007. december 2008. like folding a piece of paper so the edges meet. put a hole through it, there you are. can't tell one from the other. the numbers drift away, you're left with the ostinato: december december december.
today is the 11th of december. i didn't realize it was december until today. december 12th 2006 was the worst day of 2006. december 15th 2007 was the worst day of 2007.
the worst days of 2008 are already behind us. i sit here almost the same man. (the gash on my thumb is healing. when i look at it, i can't see into myself anymore. i can't see the redness of my insides, like having cut myself a new eye throat navel. i had hoped to grow tulips and midwinter mornings and first-kisses out of it... but it appears the shaman sold me the wrong potion). i wear thick Ray Ban reading glasses, that's changed. the faulty eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.
i fear less. hope less. expect less. demand less. speak less.
i am lonely in the same quantity. i worry the same amount.
i am more stoic. more certain of uncertain things. more moved by music. my hands are more scarred. even more homeless.
*___*___*
dear 2009,
i would like to assume i've paid my dues for two-years now, and you must be something brilliant waiting to happen, but that's a naivety i can't afford to cling to. years are not good because antecedent ones were bad. years are years the way rocks are rocks. certain and simple and plain and are their own nature. you will be whatever it is you were made to be. big or small, meaningful or not, decayed and rotted on the inside, or full of humid tropical days that make everyone but me smile. i simply don't care about you. you go on and roll the way gravity drags you. (na na na naaaa),
when you arrive, don't say hi to me, we're not gonna be friends. you're just gonna be in the same vacinity as me. but you're only for one year, and i have to live with your memories forever after. that's what i hate about you. you come, make a mess, and leave the world to clean up after you. i hate your kind (seconds and minutes and years and moments and fractions and heartbeats) (i like things that alleviate you, or momentarily pause you, or mess with you, like love-making, which is putting you in a wheelie-trash-bin and rolling you down a hill, or driving too fast at night with the windows down so you get dizzy and can't tell sunday from inertia).
whatever. see ya when you get here.
q.
*___*___*
i sit and watch rain hit the ground. i'm more concenrned with how it changes... the geanology of puddles. alterations of sound. i am alone, resting my hands, which burn, and my muscles, which occasionally spasm. outside there's lightning. spasm. more rain. the pitch of the sound changes a little. (burning). lightning but no thunder, just a single strobe effect. an epileptic driving home holds his breath and pulls over just in case. (spasm) (i think of it as a misplaced heartbeat. a little contraction in my bicep instead of my right ventricle. i'm all mixed up inside nowadays). the puddles have built up nicely, now i see ripples in them. there's one that's growing slowly brown. the others haven't assumed colors yet, they're still phantasms. i spend a few moments thinking if i should self-incise myself, and empty out all the old luggage while i still have time. lightning with no thunder. i look up. boooooom. oh. there it is. i listen to the rain, see if it has anything to contribute. no. not right now, she's reciting her 12 times-tables. i hear the grinding of a machine come to a halt. it is the overture, it's still only the 11th. then i realize, it's the tractor, they're done for the day, the rain means they have to stop. we're done for the day mate, can't work in the rain someone says to me. i ignore it, the rain is singing Orfeo ed Euridice, i am trying to decide if i should look back or not. memory, my sweet Euridice, which if i turn back for, i'll be lost forever for. (the sound of boots through mud as the workmen start abandoning their beasts to recline in mud and wash their faces with open-palms. (in Africa, it rained once, we couldn't go home, there were floods. we sat in a small elevated hutt. the other children stripped and jumped in, it came up to their chests. they sang and used little plastic buckets to splash each other with yellowed muddy water. i looked at my dad who was squatting. his eyes said no. cholera. i nodded. a child's sadness knows no bounds. i watched the other children play.
______i realize i'm looking at Euridice, i turn away, look back at the tunnel's end up ahead. mumble a few words to myself, and kick the rocks lining the path out of Hades. i saw you look back kid i hear behind me. Eff you, no you didn't. (i kick another rock). (play it tough, that sometimes works) (i hear a violin). i'm not sad, but i can't retain so much of it without it sometimes slipping through.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
love.
another night, stumbling from image to image. white buttocks and shadowed hallways and two puppies in a basket floating down a river. the distinct sense of reaching out, like walking through a foreign house at night, arms in front of you, hoping to reach fingertips or lightswitches (either will do) ... the distinct sense of wanting to cough, but not ... can't ...
____and i don't know how to say this, but, after having sat at the bustop we agreed on all night, i stand in the morning, and realize you changed your mind. i walk out onto my patio where the 6am air stares at me but doesn't ask for an explanation. i kick at a patch of overgrown grass.
it's probably best you didn't come by this time.
time.
the steam and smoke of our tea & cigarette conversations has by now reached Horologium Oscillitorium, where it is too quiet to tell our stories, and all the rocks we kicked burn standing upright of their own accord,
white jasmine petals that fall unexpectedly out of small books, and all white dust reminds me of white mountains that are impossible to look at at zenith, and birds of prey and giant spiders and my own body's scars tell
there is no getting around this hillock that grows a foot for every step you take, the seconds that
splintered images of death's twilight kingdom, of snow, and trains cutting across white fields (your skin grown so vast; all the ocean's just your whispers, and the clouds cover the whole sky so there's not a sun or a moon, but a glow of light that slowly creeps down from the sky like haloed bird-kisses or frozen fireflies or secrets swollen into muted-words (if you breathe them in you'll hear truths and all the things i don't know to say can be said
fear.
how?. how will i?. i can't imagine it. i don't know what i'd do. i really don't. i don't know what to do with it now. and now is not then. and when then happens...
god.
dear alleverything. dear giant-creation-machine. dear c# minor. dear circumstance. dear the-time-i-got-drunk-and-ended-up-in-my-underwear-running-around-the-boat-that-was-anchored-just-offshore-wet-and-chuckling-moremoremoremore. dear love-letters. dear star constellations. dear flight-from-Prague-to-Chicago-i-cried-through-mumbling-prayers-to-myself-the-whole-time-so-that-the-lady-besides-me-thought-she-was-sitting-next-to-a-madman. dear forgiver. dear departed grandfather. dear cement walls. dear miscarried fetus. dear forgotten childhood promises. dear Haifa. dear distant silence. dear ecofriendly automobiles. dear slowly-dying-cells-of-my-body. dear inescapable existence (once started, impossible to abandon). dear mistrust. dear piano-wood. dear fatigued eyelids. dear 3am paranoia. dear self-loathing. dear honesty-month. dear mistaken identities. dear person-i-will-one-day-be. dear misunderstood happiness.
how __can __i
(say the rest?)
loneliness.
stumbling out. it was 3am. you've been abandoned, left alone to face the taste in your mouth. why aren't my footsteps lining up?, what have you done - you moron, you don't even know the way back. follow that light, there, that one. it was that way. right foot. left. right foot. yes. yes. who are you? you are not this man. not this. god, someone speak to me, distract me. this is not a thing that happens in my
and we drove in my blue car. he looked out his window, i looked out the front windscreen. the hours passed and we had on loud music no one listened to. finally he looked at me and said: this is bullsh&^ you know that? and i nod. yeah, it is. it really is.
and after i awoke, realized that you probably sensed me on the other side of your eyelid, knocking, but didn't hold out your hand i thought
at 4am, finally, i clumsily walk to the kitchen and pour out some cereal. the milk spills half on the table but i don't bother cleaning it. i stare at the refrigerator that's stained like yellowed-teeth. the refrigerator hums a midnight lullaby made up only of curse words. for a minute i consider standing up and slamming my stool into it 14 times. i crunch the first spoonfull, i misjudge a little and some milk dribbles down my chin; my right hand tightens around the spoon so it hurts. a moment later i exhale. sigh. rub my index finger into the spilt milk. it's cold. you're right. it is. it really is.
no. i'm fine.
Monday, December 8, 2008
how q found contentment
Sydney_1988_016 by pierre wayser
it is night. just that. nothing more or else to it. it is somewhat humid. somewhere a light is green, somewhere red. i love these periods in life where i achieve a (sort of) dissociation from principles, and beliefs, and dogmas, and ideas, and things; so that people become only people. who do things. for reasons i don't really care about. and we are good people because we are good people - not because of reticent religious anxiety, not because of fear love hope IOU dogma afterlife spiritual-growth nothing nothing. yes means yes. no is no. up has a meaning and so does down. sometimes these are confused and that's fine too, just because you can't spot where violet turns to red in a rainbow doesn't mean there's no rainbow. from time to time, i subconsciously (i wish i knew how to do it on command!) manage to take a large figurative box. in it i place (first and foremost) god. then i take his silly principles, his ideas, his mumbo jumbos and i put them all in there. next i take hope fate Adelaide deceit love friendship loyalty membership childhood lust fraternity memory coolness intelligence pride Haifa eyes that are yellow and blue and honey-colored Los Angeles the future and i put them all in. i sail it away and i'm somehow left being just myself. i find myself doing good things for no sake at all. sometimes i disagree with a thing i do think want. i bypass the usual excursions into self-loathing, and merely shrug it off. good things happen somedays. other days bad things. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to terrible people. there is no divinely rewarding god upstairs. there is no spiritual karmic law (at least not in this world). i sigh a breath of relief that i have at last discovered that things happen. thoughts happen. actions are not predetermined by playing juvenile hypothetical games... or those interview-exam what-would-you-do's. no one knows what you'll do. i can't get mad, i can't really get anything. i float through life a little hazy. like the edge has been taken off. i can't find a 90 degree angle anywhere (and i'm pleased someone put all the sharp objects away). sounds are sometimes near, sometimes far. all this i seem to have learnt from hammers and nails and sheets of gyprock and cans of paint and my tender bruised lily hands. they have hardened. there are bruises all over them, and the knuckles are worn, and i can sense a strange strength in my body (similar, but distinctly different from the feel of working out regularly). (also there is no aesthetic reward, it is my body's secret from me the strenth it has found in its lower back). it seems to have come from angles that align and others that don't. it seems to have come from the realization that standing staring at it won't get it done. it seems to have come from measuring the boards incorrectly three times and there's nothing you can do about it but measure again. and my thumb has a jigsaw shaped gash that reminds me of barbed-wire and world war two. it probably needs stitches but i avoid taking it in because i feel spring's latest bud may find its way out from there. like if i'm patient, and work quietly a whole new me will grow out of my cut. i nurse it and care for it and it still retains its vintage glamour - it's what's left of the war, a heritage of sorts. right is right and wrong is wrong. sometimes right is wrong and wrong is right. no one cares. monday manages to fit into tuesday without any assistance from me. i just have to do the next thing. stay on task. will my elbow up, and leave the falling motion to gravity. there's a sharpness to my palm, heat from the friction of the mallet's handle rubbing for an hour. the skin peeling away after sawing for 40 minutes. time ticks on. this board (being cut longitudinally) is testing the age of my skin. the atlas of my patience. i continue to listen to the sound of little teeth wearing at once-were-trees, and watching sawdust fill the room like an evil yellow-colored snow, and keep grinding into like the thrusts of lovemaking, or the pains of labor, or the simple gentle truth of a magic gyro that converts self-negativity into a positive self-harm. i feel i am improving my body. making it stronger, so it can hold longer. so i can touch women and my hands will feel like brick walls and not like tulip petals. (one having failed, perhaps the other will succeed). there is nothing i want. nothing i am. nothing i was. nothing i can(not) fathom. i think slow, desultory thoughts that go from nowhere to nowhere. i have dissociated myself from meaning. nothing makes sense, and what's even better: nothing needs to. (because it does). when i don't question, things simply exist in a content here-we-are.ness that makes intuitive sense that defies.shuns.ignores.elevates questioning. i understand everything by turning the other way. my blurred vision is the clearest one i've found.
i don't know anything.
i care about nothing.
i wish it could always be this way.