taking account

this is because i'm 27, that makes it time to do this. because i am 27 and suitably tired. suitably blind. suitably all knowing, all seeing, all confused, all certainty. because i don't think about my shoes anymore and barely lift my feet when i walk. because i hold my back upright. because i smile only when i mean too. because i laugh less frequently, but feel like an honest man when i do. because i'm 27. accordingly, i don't feel the need to have friends. but when i do have them, i feel the need to love them deeply. deeply and madly. intensely. because memory is a thing of oceanic volume to me. something voluptuous and mesmerizing so that i can sit on busses and trains and at desks and behind plastic sweaty steering wheels and be lost inside and around beneath and above it for hours upon hours and years upon years all within its confines of faded yellows around the corners of people's names and white-washed splashes across accounts of weeks and who said what and last kisses and first moments and the geraniums in haifa couldn't possibly be as red as i remember and the whole of prague sounds like ice crunching underfoot.

because i'm 27 now it means i've amassed personalities. identities. once upon a 1990 i was ceasar and once upon an autumn i was lost and once upon a midsummer night's yawn i made out with a big breasted blonde by a river in Adelaide, having lied to our friends who waited for us till 3am that the car had not started. once upon this once i shot free-throws and dreamt of being in the NBA. of writing essays and being in the high court. of looking at microscope slides and being a doctor in the western sahara. because i am 27 i know about wanting to be a husband and wanting to be a shallow playboy who's fingers smell of women's sex and who's lips are tender from being bitten too hard. a 27 year old knows a little about that. a little about loneliness and isolation and greed and has enough knowledge to hold a book lightly when it deserves to be so held. who isn't afraid to tell a stranger to go f*ck themselves and to tell another stranger in the most sincere voice shhh, don't cry. this here is a bad moment. another moment will be fine again. another moment somewhere is fine just right now and is waiting for you. and for me also. and you and i, new stranger friend, must do what we can to chase dandelions till we find that moment. these are the accounts of old men such as myself. in this generation, i am fossil and wise like Tiresias.

because i am 27 and have lost 27 things i don't remember. 27 times maybe i just lost the same thing. over and over. maybe 27 times i lost the same thing in different ways and found it again (which i also don't remember) but only that i lost it again so that when i needed it wasn't there only to be found when it made no difference only to be missing again when it did. and if you know what i mean then...
then...

but here are flowers and here is a man who likes the feel of a comfortable couch. the feel of a freshly made bed. the feel of honey in his mouth (even if not the taste) the feel of breast in his mouth even if it has no taste, or if like yours is a little bit salty or if like the future it is the taste of all we've got. all we've got. all we've got. i'm a walker every city i've ever been to is made for walking through. maybe not LA.

i'm 27 that's a perfect age for lists. names of cats i've never had and names of people who could have been my great friends had i had time to make new greatest friends. Nabil. Kevin. Zane. Daniel.

all i want to talk about at 27 is the smell of jasmine in the summer from behind stone walls. and how tired men get. how if you sit at a desk for 10 hours a day you start to feel like you smell of wretched filth and stare at every hair that falls to the table and your hands are sweaty so everything you touch feels like it's covered in saliva and how you shower 4 times a day and when you touch your face it feels plastic from all the drugs you take to stay awake and not be depressed and how you're not depressed but you're not really anything else either. when someone asks you how you're feeling you say what feeling? and don't cry because you can't but feel that there's a part of you somewhere in another sub-sub-universe that's crying for everything if the Gee Eff Cee taught us anything is you pay for it all in the end. that's something i've learnt by now. or at least learnt to be afraid of. even though i'm afraid of less things.

goddammit the Disintegration Loops are beautiful.

i grow old
i grow old
i shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.

i shall brush my teeth and rub my forehead.

i shall continue to be another of another,
like all the others who are also another of another,
and be pixels on the screens of strangers and
moving blur in the peripheral vision of supermarket checkouteers such as myself
and shall live until i stop.

but for now.
i have lost the 27th thingee of the thingees i know i once had.