The Die-er







Preface
I have never misrepresented myself, neither as man nor woman, as sighted nor blinded, with blunt present nor honed future in my head. The predicament of observer has been thrust upon me. I sanction no stance with regard to what happens. I retell and I foretell, always like a pulp in my mouth chewed beyond taste.
--Tiresias.

















A Warning
Describe the line. It rises and is crossed and he is there. Describe the line. It rises in the shape of so many things. Describe the line. It has been split into hairs. Split and divided as the hairs of his head, first wet, then dry, black. Black at birth. Describe the line. When drawn around and about it makes an island which moves as he moves, a placental shore extending as he extends, a walk in his own shadow.

Describe the island. An umbilicus. From his umbilicus blooms the ragged cord. Describe the island. It is tiny and puckered to suck at the cord. Describe the island. It is self-contained: causing his grandfather (maternal) and his grandmother (paternal) to leave West Germany the next day in an airplane. This being the still bisected Germany which at some point beyond now will be reunified, as will his father and he be reunified. Not even the first grandchild, they had flown toward West Germany and awaited him, his head to appear, like a dark and bristly brush he was found just where left one day before they flew back toward America. Describe the island. No German. No memory of seeing West Germany, so he has never seen West Germany and now it is gone. Describe the island. In all likelihood it is magnetic, though an opposite pole to what approaches. Describe the island. It migrates from umbilicus to mouth. He feels it rise and fall between the two, as in the story he’s heard of his father melting, at sight of the birthing process, down the OR window to the floor without rising until much later. There is a sound for the sense of collapse which takes its inevitability at shoulder height and presses down into the framework of the body. It is as disappointing as the lack of fortitude itself, the shushing of limbs toward the floor then clatterstop: resistance. Inert and piled there on the linoleum the body displays all manner of congruity and incongruity. The splay of arm or leg can be read as tea leaves or the entrails of a cock and the variance is slight between prophecies. His father’s clenched right fist, outstretched right arm and left hand spread and pressed between cheek and floor are all among the indicators for a slow circling of wagons around another self, emergent and delicate as a hollow egg. His legs have thudded and settled into the position for walking. Each of these taken alone may be simple detail, but coupled together indicate leaving and emotional upheaval all round in five years time, thirteen years before the first steps toward the reunification of Germany.

Describe the line. First it was a bi-directional indicator neither completely him nor completely his mother. Once through her exhaustion, the line looped around his skinny neck and her blood poisoning, they were each left their own section of the line. The root, umbilicus, of his spawning the island. The root of hers slopped out and incinerated, as was the practice then among military people. But through its incineration fired into the air and turned webby by a process of memory and hormones. Whereas his was singular and sucked at by his umbilicus, hers was multitude and intersecting and aimed at capture for the simple reason of context, which he had yet to learn.

On a November day very like this one, though in Texas several years before, a president’s head was split and spilled into his wife’s lap like a hot and profoundly private secret, splashes of which: skull bits, brain matter, dazzled the surrounding agents with quick reflections of the sun. His smeary skin at birth was of a piece dazzling under the OR lights and expectation. Now carried through the West German wind, toward their upstairs rooms, the light all round like an upholstery, he was fully vested in the notion that this staggering action, indeed many of those involved stagger throughout the footage, while predating him cast his life in a certain tenor. The event hung not in the manner of a guardian angel so much as in a mood he’d fill out in time, like the kiss of someone once beautiful whiled away into a gnarled thumb then pressed into service against bitterness.

When strapped in the baby seat he’d convulse his body while sucking the room into his lungs, inching closer to table’s edge. Through freefall he’d managed to inhale the last corners of the room and compress it all into a hyper-dense singularity, this was the first instance of the island receding. But it wouldn’t stop, smaller and smaller it drew until it was just a pinch behind his stomach. He hit the floor, arms and legs striking out from him, sending the room spewing out in place of itself. The quiet he kept inside him was ravenous. Their love of the idea of Love had erected this apartment so far from Pennsylvania, had erected him as a safe stratagem, as a method of propagating security that guided their respective hands like a string. There was the love of the rescuer. There was the love of alternate territories. There was the love of the mole at 4 o’clock to one’s navel as one’s Soul. The love of traveling southward through Europe, from West Germany to Spain, having just multiplied, become tri-legged, before heading back toward America to face what they’d become in the interim.




The Storm
On. On and in. Intimation is virginity itself in the moment. They’d arrived at one another through a third, at the bedside of a third intimate with both. There were clues laid around which I will not pursue, ways of handling the body of a friend, possibly near death, which forego pretense, which relate absolute structures of personality, of tendency however dense one may be to them at the time. One holds the hand, limp, with thumbs crossed for instance or thumb nestled down, between palms. The first showing a concern, with a hint of the needing to care for, the crossing of thumbs as a confusion of persons, a dependency upon that which cannot be changed and so a well of Sorrow; the second deeply sensual and indicative of a situation with the body longing to reclaim itself through the physical act of love. Good posture to a spine inclined forward, unsprung but for a glimpse of insight, a breath warm with understanding, tongue-true, is painful. They both sat rigid in their seats at the third’s right and left hands pressing their shoulders back and thus their hearts out. On. On and in.

In. In and on. The larger, whitened about the edges, question of sex had to be intended, intended and retreated from, made a loving context for their bodies to forget their histories into. In and on the pats, grasps, grazes, the flitting and dawdling in this or that wet place, the stroke with arms crossed, eyes closed, the get it over with and paining void once gotten over, had to be pressed upon the new material: each other. All prior experiment wedded into the moist little hollows between their joined fingers. They were married and loved their bodies for what they did to each other, for how they carried away bitterness like streams of urine onto cool dark morning leaves, the steam of which, rising, converting, all too soon, into semblance, into vaguery, into what she quickly called You Don’t Find Me Attractive and what he called But You’re Not A Man.

In one of their goes he was rooted in. Describe the line. It rises and is crossed and he is there. Then they mounted a flight toward West Germany as a white horse, each the other’s rescuer.

Nocturne. Nocturnal. The West German night lay as a lens across his eyes. Polymer night. Stout night. When the plane was mounted to fly back toward America, and he equipped to them, he remained shaded by the West German night, made its tender host. This was the first seed of discontent found its way into the island, dropped from the sky or carried up then dropped. Before this, once in the apartment he’d clenched his fists and eyes with equal tension and popped out night there and then, though only for a moment, blink, a moment which then rose up, slits the color of sun through skin became glow and, if truth be told, his outer knuckles chilled while inside, the hot curl of fingers into palms was a kind of conception, the birth of touch.

The ocean itself was night’s body at his crossing with Stuttgart as a prodigal eye trained on beginnings, untetherings, and shining as if from a hole, or if prodded by Charon’s pole the unmercifully undead heart of his real and true.
The night language was in his ear and he, ill-equipped to understand, much later, would copy it into journals and publish it in books of little consequence. The language was a way of making a body out of words, either through arousal or dumbfoundedness, which he proved no master over. Hearing the thing, the phrase, wet his tongue with a pull like an ebb tide. The silence in the plane made him still and the re-breathed air made him far too aware of personality.




















Pirates
How it was in America for him early on was a matter conjecture. Two episodes only, how it is with memory tight-fisted, he remembered and put in books much later. The first from The Imposture Notebook and, perhaps his earliest memory:
“I. Bees
A. Description
1. Tree trunk broader than me
a. Apple tree
b. Reaching tall
c. No birds
d. How far is it
e. Now only Beckett, how far is it
2. Fruit rotten, touching the gravel drive
a. Sour driven
b. And most slide under foot
c. Knees or elbows
d. Buzzing
e. Gravel then the cars
i. Two I think
f. Mouth waters
g. Step from grass to fruit to gravel as from out of the sea
3. Sounds
a. Below, at midsection and above
b. Honey bees? Though only larger motes
c. Buzzing at ear
d. Tickles ear, nape
e. Larger voices far off from the house
f. Two cars I think
i. Nicer than the tires over the gravel
B. Actions
1. Poking
a. Brown nail
b. Warm, moist
2. Throwing
a. One
b. Two
c. Three
d. Not well, Four
e. Five, impressed upon the tree
i. Circle
3. Biting
a. Soft, though firm here
b. Turn, bring to mouth, bite
c. Upper teeth puncture, lower miss, ooze soft apple
d. Do not see bees
4. Stung
a. I can only feel upper lip, aflame and growing
b. There is only upper lip as a limit
c. Set upon by voice and held aloft
d. No longer the sky but ceiling
e. The bathroom
f. Women’s voices arching to my ear and higher
g. Hands
h. The water is cool and there’s my face
i. Slip
i. Bottom lip split against basin
j. Man’s voice, let me take care of him
i. Women
k. Silent and an oracle through my swollen mouth
C. Effect
1. Hesitancy to form intimate relations
a. To commit to touch
2. Or lack of limits to self
a. Very quickly too intimate with words
i. Worlds.”
Of course, some of this he speculated in order to jibe the memory with the story of the memory, as one may, speculating, touch, in a certain way, a lover’s closed eye or middle palm to communicate a not oft, though not unpleasurable, practiced desire. The second is from his Scrawl and is fictionalized, as it’s spoken in the voice of Hades addressing Orpheus; once again memory may be fulfilling its story:
“HADES: I played with, once as a child, that which should never have existed. This was in Las Vegas, the early Seventies, stowed away in our garage against the sun. I was really far too young to remember what happened, but have been told enough and imagined enough to, now, have a memory of it, though certain details of this memory seem superfluous. The memory is a combing of these ingredients: the garage, a lamp or some kind of orange glow, the threshold into the house, a large quilt, a bicycle and a scorpion. There is, I think, a tendency for memory to preserve itself. What’s more the reality of the event is passed, so that what remains singularly is the memory of the event as contained by various minds. I’ve often wondered if I had written down the memory of the event at each stage of my life would it jibe, becoming more subtle, more nuanced as my life progressed or would it subtly flee from the visual presence of the memory to take harbor in the faculties left to interpret the memory of the event. So that while the memory itself might be nearly impossible to retrieve its message had laid alongside my heart as a shunt into the Soul.
The body itself often hinders memory.

The Garage
For the purpose of the memory of the event the garage was mostly dark and very warm, though not moist. There was a quality to the heat and dark which I felt I could absorb through a deep, slow and regular method of breathing. It was an enormous buffer zone surrounding my small body, through which turbulence was smoothed and from which my tiny lungs could suck a pure congeniality. The floor was cool underfoot and thus provided an anchor. There was balance in the garage, through which I could swim as if through viscosity itself, absolutely buoyant.

A lamp or some kind of orange glow
It was opposite the threshold into the house. This was, if truth be told, a corona of light not quite winked out and thus a remarkable component of the memory of the event. Its color and persistence had the feel of a gaze not quite invited while not wholly unappreciated, something more akin to a streetlight than the sun. It may have hung from a corner of the ceiling.

The threshold into the house
In the memory of the event it was through here that my mother entered in response to my scream, thus entirely transforming the scale of all I’d done. It also provided an entrance for the neighbor, who transformed the scale once again and irrevocably. When moving through a door the idea of continuous space is required, which I’d not yet developed, so often I thought of the threshold as a kind of mouth through which I was either digested or expelled into another circumspect space.

A large quilt
This covered the floor of the garage directly beneath the bicycle and was blue, though appeared gray in the orange light, thus was easily imagined as either the sky or the sea. The quilt was stitched with a grid pattern, so that if smoothed out each thing on it could be plotted.

A bicycle
Its seat pressed into the quilt, graphed at (0, 0); its handlebars somewhere further along, perhaps at (0, 12 or 13). Each point of contact bore the weight rather like the haunches of a poorly loaded animal. The bicycle was always inverted in the memory of the event and its rear wheel spun emitting a sound a shade different than a hiss, something more of a hum with a subtle whine, a plaintive whine. Even as I spun the wheel in the dark, listening for the sound’s pitch to be altered by the wheel’s velocity, the portal thus created approached the threshold into the house. I had been the beneficiary of many filters up to that point of my short life, filters on talking and listening for the most part, but this portal was something of a filter under my control. The spiral of air drawn through the spokes toward me would arrange the words of overheard talk into a body of words nearly as palpable as a pat on the back, the mussing of hair or even a peck on the cheek. So often the talk through the threshold into the house had the habit of being either far too loud or far too wet and airy to be decipherable, but through the filter of the wheel I heard the essential things a child should hear.

A scorpion
This I never saw. Though the hiss emitted from the mouths of both my mother and the neighbor as they spoke its name frightened me more than the arachnid, however deadly, ever did. While circumnavigating the quilt, perhaps for the second or third time, I felt and heard what seemed like a glass figurine, thick bodied, spindly legged, both underfoot and under the quilt. It popped, but just after a little sizzle; and I called to let her know what I’d found and thus fear was sown into me, fear of that which I could not control.

The memory of the event
The eye of the room spun at middling speed and I revolved around it, as objects will an eye, walking the outer edge of the quilt occasionally mis-stepping my foot onto the cool garage floor. It was when my little toes or heel or the ball of my foot came down on the concrete that everything drained into that area of contact, to suck at the cool. As the wheel slowed into a hum and stopped, I was pulled from orbit to crank the pedal. First pulling it up with my fingers then pushing it down with the heel of my hand. Pulling, pushing. Pulling, pushing. When the momentum carried the petal back up I forced it down hard until the wheel whined and the air started to move. The monotony of this rotation and my intersecting rotation was a contact just below my sternum like one hot fingertip, say my father’s, pressed there for remembrance, like the desert carried on the wind. I stepped syllables into the outer edge of the quilt, though of what words I cannot remember. Finally something broke under my foot, after the briefest of resistance, collapse with the sound of a short, quick guttural darting toward the wall. My orbit was halted and collapse on a grander scale proceeded.
At my call, and in one continuous motion, my mother breeched the threshold into the house, took me into her arms and lifted the corner of the quilt which I indicated. Horror has a way of mirroring horror so that both the action and reaction often assume a similar aspect. We went for the neighbor. The sound of his shovel under it was as harsh and dire as the first syllable of its own name. I’d killed it, though for good measure we walked to the highway which bound our front yard so it could be thrown beneath the wheels of an enormous truck sweeping by, dragging with it, in a deafening roar my wheel could never produce, the facts of the event.”


















Escape from slavery
Here is the story of what happened, of what measures were left to him. Wheeled toward the west with the sun, that arc was the brow he took for his face and positioned beneath it each eye for infinitesimal vision and effect. Their sea’s green absorbed, thus mitigated, what was spoken into them. The litanies he’d taken in from both mother and father since infancy will eventually solidify, calcify into a new bone something like an Adam’s rib in reverse. He’ll cough around it; feel it poke and jab his liver, his heart.
Its eventual extraction will be piecemeal and at his own hand. Reaching into his belly while sleeping, dust in his eyes, to pull the bone, then with an admixture of spit and words will form a body, a twin, the memory of himself.
Guilt is a needling thing, like a bird’s beak at its nest or at its young, which when weaving among the twigs makes its own truth or the story of its truth. It is, after all, all opinion isn’t it?
I myself have felt guilt hot on the heels of taking things out of context, of fudging the particulars, even of it’s for their own good. I had often felt the urge to tell a love what had happened to me. How upon sight of the snakes my sex folded up and into itself leaving me open, how my breasts swelled like skins with wine. But then what is it for a man to have been with a woman whose was once a man, who would again be a man? I feel guilty for my lack of transparency, though grateful for my safety.
He was as guilty as they, but absolutely itched for their streams of words which flowed through his eyes and fell like warm milk down his neck and curved spine to his nether parts then pushed up again to stave the flow and stop it. Could he have been expected to understand the long term effects of such deluge, him only a few months old, though? Then there was how to plug his eyes. Blindness? Adequate, but I’ve found blindness to open a blossom in the brain which is difficult to ignore, then difficult to go without as it fades. Removed from speculation much of what happens here would seem bland.

She’d push him, talking into the world around them etudes on “I’m no one’s fool”, talking a web of fragilities into the air. If intent, with eyes closed, eyes quashed to little fists, he could trace her warbling out and up, into the branches of the American trees. This was a camouflage she’d been born to assume. As each leaf was a proof of her conviction, her foreknowledge of the situation with his father, she’d never have to admit that having the wool over her eyes was anything but her own doing. Strangely, she was securing a world by talking into it, the power of the name, while his father was securing a world through fathering in other men only the thought of himself. His father spoke into the world by what went unsaid and the duration of silences; his voice bawdy through a wall and his touch lingering like the memory of a touch, so for his men it was that which had already happened and thus fulfilled its own expectation. If his mother’s securing was through the power of the Name, albeit the naming of her fears, his father’s securing was through the power of acting upon the Name, albeit the fucking of his fears.
Both a stroller and a wall are methods of transport taking at their base a certain passivity, an assumed portion of which lay in wait in the Other and was brought to bear only in circumstances when singularity was out the window. It was in each of these objects that his first memories of their divide were housed, vessels he had emptied of solidity and comfort to use anew.























Brazil
From the corner of my eye a boy’s head enfolded under the right arm of the Spartan. Both figures bend forward, staring into the earth as the Spartan rasps, in short bursts, across the small face an iron claw in the shape of his hand.
A figment hasn’t a sound.

I will, if you’ll permit me, relate the story of my own first transformation as it entails a similar sort of passivity.
Upon sighting the snakes twining round one another tightly in what seemed a Herculean effort at erasure I was caught. Sex, even between beasts, when viewed from the outside strikes you dumb, while giving your body free reign as flaying your hand produces instant distance and incredulousness. There was a weight at my chest as if I’d grown a new, parallel heart and both it and the prior heart had become monstrously engorged at the sight. I was pulled toward the earth in an ever so slight arc, pulled by my breasts which now hung and moved just after the rest of me moved. Next there was an inhalation except of flesh rather that air and in through my nether parts rather than my mouth and lungs. My sex breathed itself into my body proper leaving me open. What remained on my exterior was a little beak of flesh which itched and pointed away from me. The snakes left me to my new body, which felt as one dropped over me from the trees, hugging me so tightly as to push my wind out, named Love Thyself.

There is. There is. There is in an eye beneath an olive tree the evidence that I am now a woman as surely as there is dust beneath its man’s stinking frame.

When his father burst from the pool, on base in Thailand waiting next to the war the Americans were losing, he was like an oil binding each glance toward him together into a spotlight of attention he could thrive under. One nearly furtive glance found him an authority whose yoke he’d willingly assume. While any other found his father’s hand pushing through his hair, releasing the last drops of water down his spine, either simply utilitarian or the kind of flag better left ignored. Caught in his eye, Nearly Furtive was approached by his father with two Cokes.

What is the blister attraction will not let be? The heart? Perhaps, if it is said by way of meaning the genitals. The ego? Surely, but not simply. Some would say the magnet of Fate, which while drawing things together heats them up. It would be far too romantic to say loneliness, though certainly that is what many will think, too clean.
In the end every hand or cave wants a name and to be called out by name and so orients, by attraction, the mess. As for choices, it is as it comes; so the curve of lip at the final syllable of your name when issued from the beloved’s mouth is your downfall or the slick spot of saliva just off center of the beloved’s lower lip as the mouth makes to say your name or the fear of your name harbored by the beloved or the silence it is kept in. You may take this to mean that we are, each of us, interchangeable. I daresay we are not; there is a rhythm to be struck, which, being subtle, is often missed. You can only call a man a woman or a woman a man so often until either they transform or you get a jarring you won’t soon forget or they make off with the wind.

Later in his father’s office Nearly Furtive talked, opening and closing his lips, showing his tiny, faintly blue teeth, talked toward a courage which he felt pull from his middle spine into his stomach and rise into his mouth. His father’s hands lay left on right in the center of his desk. His wedding ring was the only metal thing on the desk save the frame holding his mother’s picture. Nearly Furtive’s voice and thought matched up on the words, ARE, YOU, MARRIED, as his father’s ring ticked on the desktop. Both heads inclined toward the picture. In his father’s winningest smile, atop his skinny neck, each tooth sung out both shine and these words in unison, MY, WIFE, IS.
When fitted with a yoke I imagine it to be uncomfortable at first while the skin toughens and the mind contrives it really to be other things, a young thigh pressed near to each ear, the body of a stricken hero, sacks of grain, anything which can be tossed off at will. Only after the body has forgotten its presence and the mind embittered itself does it become a yoke, something meant to harness the power of something else.










Shipwreck
You click. The words.
Prescription for simultaneity of place in the story: brown shutters and the expanse of twenty-five years. It is dumbfounding. The house there skirting Las Vegas in 1972 and later in 1997 when his father returned with curiosity, the shutters held fast. SAME BROWN SHUTTERS, his father commented, after having first lost a little then won a little money, as a way of saying nothing had changed, when in fact everything had changed. SAME BROWN SHUTTERS. Same is what? Same is when I’d say, “same bloody lump” after starting my second cycle and when I’d repeat every month “same bloody lump” for seven years? Same is a shield or the mode of transport into exile? Same is perpetuity? Same is sudden pitch into the neuter? SAME BROWN SHUTTERS behind which he crushed a scorpion under heel, into which his only brother was brought? SAME BROWN SHUTTERS his father droned to hide the relief and the ache.

Click. The words you.
Prescribed by the simultaneity of two actions in the story, it makes adjustments. He was in Las Vegas with his mother and new brother while his father was in Thailand not saying, through hissed-in breath, SAME SHUTTERS, but thinking same gender. The gifts were appropriate to his rank and well liked. On taking, from the box stuffed with brown paper and capped with a letter on white paper, the hats from the box, his father and Nearly Furtive searched the Thai streets for closed toe sandals, their camouflage seemed dark against the light of Vegas, his father’s toenails were patched with fungus he couldn’t bear to have seen, only to be mocked by the Disney patches sewn over the hats’ surfaces. The Thai people leave their toes exposed as if they have no shame.

If I am a lover to a woman to whom I was a lover to when I was a man is she the same woman? Am I the same lover? Same is a matter of emphasis, it would seem, the vast need of the speaker to have been impressed upon the world and been duly taken account of, noted. At the base of it, working within a pidgin of Time, a phraseology, that if blended at its most luxurious presents a past which predicts its future and a future with notes of its past: very near that quality in the voice remaining always unmimicable. Have I lingered too long on this spot? Roll over and I’ll bite that mole you’ve made me love.

At the same moment his father spins on the toes of his right foot, to check the stitching along the sole, letting the faint moan from the frowning leather ripple up and over him, he spins the camouflage hat on finger end as if spinning the world. The stitching is the color of a mole privated away.
His mother’s face looked on covered with a slick of Happiness as thick as it is made. THESE ARE MY BOYS flashed before her eyes slowing their motions because of what was left out, leaped between, foisted upon the world. THIS IS FROM MY HUSBAND was in back of her, laced across her shoulders, below the base of her skull, and pulling down like a yoke. She tasted dust,

Gravity can easily be taken for Time as both pull you into dust.

first dry, then moist and sweet, she watched her boys prance in their new camo hats, then sour and hot, acid crept up her esophagus and slow-burned where her tongue began, MY HUSBAND closed around her neck like a hand.



















Sole Survivor
Truth amounts to nothing more than a beagle in the corner, agreeable to all for a gentle rub or the slightest morsel.

I have foreseen, in all its variety and circumstances, across Human Time, always the story of the child born with an invisible penis. In many places this would mean a quick end, a swift blow to the head or, less mercifully, immersion in cold water with the resulting chill-skin and coughing so violent as to make one’s eyes water and blur the whole thing.
If, as in some versions, the child reaches the age of sequestering by gender it is instantly popular among the girls, who, for the life of them, cannot figure how this girl can do what she does to them, though quickly stop trying and wait in line. It is from this version stems a tradition of immaculate pregnancies and births.
In other versions the child is quickly sent to either the cloistered life or the life of a hermit. In both cases the unseen member becomes a spiritual stick, and in some tellings it is God or Devil or both necessitating bindings of differing severity or, in at least one version, severing with a thin flint blade. In this version when found the child has just died and its blood lay pooled around its pelvis. The body is taken and cleaned, the wound seared with a stone from the fire and its blood used to give a little color to its nipples and lips before being left for the wolves as an offering to stave off hunger and perversion.
In some stories these children grow into formidable wives. In others formidable husbands; in some warriors; in some tinkerers; in some conduits between Past and Future; in some the medium of expression; in some, once found out, their skins are highly valued among the impotent; in some they are taken and meted out on occasions of great celebration or darkest dearth. In one case, at least, the child instantly understands its totality and is so filled with Freedom as a result it slips into the world unnoticed by all to do as it pleases.

It is in this manner I and the boy may have some lineage.

Longing is a method of precipice, a method of shaping the body by memory. Nostalgia is a method of re-placing the present body into the past. It is a method by which the desire to forget, palpable as a bitterness, say of walnut skins on the back of the tongue, stokes the means of remembering; a method by which ghost bodies are positioned throughout the past in what begin as futile and end as ignoble attempts to alter the future.
For his mother the ghost bodies are those of the pups she raised as a child, the pups she regaled as children and stroking, soft, so soft as to seem moist, pups’ fur, did not cause his mother’s parents to adore one another.

Once when chewing a wire coat hanger, simply for the metallic tang on the tongue, for the running of saliva, its end poked through his mother’s right cheek. An inch or so of brassy metal inclined back toward his mother’s mouth as if to complete a circle and thus draw his mother into a similar passivity. This sent his mother’s mother screaming from the house in an exemplary act of denial. Could running full tilt out the door and down the hill toward one brother’s house really stave off the present and its need for immediate attention? Is it so that to run from something so clearly of the moment one is running toward an image of the past?
He will become enamored with the prospect of method and its consequence for passivity, will, on a January day which will feel like an April day far hence from now, come to recognize how deeply it is that regret is held within the method of the body functioning in the wind between the garage and the house proper, in the slow curl of the wrist while retracting the wire from his mother’s cheek; how to be imbued with the passivity of a piece of metal formed into function is also to be imbued with a certain strength.














First Days
In the end I can say to you that Del Rio was hot, was the beginning of heat, but you’d not know what I mean, though neither would he: sweaty hands at the window, the doorknob, at every surface, all of them hot and he in among them.

I am in a position of large regret as you see now, the stray entered by the door left open by his mother to catch even the hint of a breeze, leapt to the counter and began to lap the butter, as you may have guessed I have no effect, can have no effect. While the cat leaps I can tell you where it will land, can tell you that in perfect synchronicity with its leap a cloud of similar color and shape will trace across the sun causing a shadow to be cast upon the first step of his father and Near Furtive beginning their ascent toward the apartment.

The light falls into halves. Falls and is described along the line bisecting the parking lot as a melee between the Light and the Dark, though such descriptions are wrong and misleading. The asphalt ocean in Texas, where the cars are buoyant and the people a tide; what is the shape of the things I could tell you? What are the things? Any shape would be a lie, would be only the shape each letter forms in your breast.
He jumps up, outside the apartment door, in the open hallway, and on occasion can see over the balcony into the parking lot. It is split into black and lighter black as if part had been washed and left to dry. He can feel their steps on the stairs vibrate up through his feet and legs. There’s a gray tail brushes the inside of his right calf like a warm breath as he passes through the open door and shuts it behind him.

The vibration behind his mother’s right eye, the minute buzz, begins when his father and Nearly Furtive enter the apartment. It isn’t audible; his mother cannot even feel it though her vision is altered always afterward. The outline of his father looks perforated to his mother as if, perhaps, his father’s pores are breathing him into the surrounding atmosphere, as if his father’s essence was now being perpetuated otherwise by spores and there was now less of him, somehow, contained in his body which shone into the room.
The sun shone full force now and, through the small kitchen window, contained the butter dish in a yellow square. Scooped into valleys and peaks by the cat’s tongue, it seemed a landscape to him where form and essence were more subtle and so more malleable. Bodies should be like this, so that under the tongue they are transformed, though not without the hope of return, subtle and made to fit more easily by heat and hunger. The adults talk and laugh into the air sounds which are breaking things until the square moves on, splitting the butter dish into day and night.
Nearly Furtive played along and thought the words ONE, IS, A, MAN, HOW? into a thread twisted around a finger tip, twisted upon itself over and over again, thought the blue-going-purple finger tip into the words LIKE, THIS?

Throng. Late into the night his father and Nearly Furtive will look out from a balcony, dancing all around them, them dancing in 1973, THRONG will fill their minds then diverge among them into ENDLESS POSSIBILITY, LONLINESS, WRITHING, CONTROL. In the eye loneliness grasps every man there ambiguously and broadcasts ARE YOU MY FATHER. In the eye endless possibility is more forward, glints the geometry of bodies intimately engaged; in the eye writhing is equipped to this. In the eye control controls the eye.




















The Journal: Food and Shelter

...engram...I feel this huge anger toward the structure of the sentence toward expectation...The limb is not necessarily the limb the letters explode that...Where are the letters...Vertical word/horizontal thing...I want the it was in each phoneme, in the attention before the phoneme...Not suffering but the distinction of all things...Bring along the nets, Lord garment...makes the “A” pre-attentive...Mordecai...Intermeasurables ...Violet...the agent instead...Prophesy to the breath...This too is the emptying into (illegible)...Covalence...Letting...Flood water...Copperhead...Selves...To bear...Mind ...Force...Suction...Sweet...Private...Cohort...Dispersive...True wood...Way... Poke... Topped...Thinned...Eliminated...A heft...Thud...Servant...Coordinate...Metaphor doesn’t out stretch at all, no new space/attention, but relies on memory to disable what is no longer present in fullness because attention has been introduced...It’s a gesture toward the infinite which can never be at hand...Is no metaphor but the form of the saying of “I am” in me...Stretch sensors along the spine...Slave...Out stretched self, twin selves...Force versus exaltation...Thought: fullness, parable...Observation of thought: realized (acknowledged) separation...Description of thought: superceding I, allegory redemption/dogma...The body owns, owns...Does thought annul the body...Relatedness still fleshes out difference...Text creates attention as it creates a participant...The self-emptying of “I am” is the self-emptying of difference...Attention is self-emptying...No salvation...Judgment is both outside and fulfills the moment...Only moment...In a true relatedness there is no difference...Saying of “I am” and the emptying of “I am”...Relatedness does not stand, is rather a plasma, not between but only in, only new space (attention)...Difference stands the letter (phoneme) does not stand...Text creates attention because it is speech first and foremost...Attention versus difference... Proline...Household...Synthesized...Authority of word versus authority of thing...If I say chair have I created reality, I have [created] a violence with the inhalation...The true saying though has no division...The self is truly emptied into the thing which is invested and therefore able to become uncovered...Consciousness=time...When the text presents itself as a work it only concerns itself with telling about...Enemy of power...Each text/phoneme must create attention otherwise it is a spectacle for power...The text must be porous...Relatedness is the dissemination of power so it is an un-power...All ends... I’m feeling the pressure of abandonment...There is the nominal, the verbal which
Reciprocate...Are the letters/sounds antinomian...Of course not...Yet they are not Components, are the shape of light, are the articulated difference which is self-emptying
...Is process always ideal...If it is it is only as process or in process not in or as retrospect
or in or as projection...So present process is ideal...To (away) from shine...To bring forth...To point out/bring to light...E ideal in transvaluing between the girls, the tree...Parent-mount, his Vesuvius, his cicada (so) his distance...The soul is anarchical...E ideal in the process valuing between the three girls tree...E ideal in the process transvaluing between the girls the tree...His (parent-mount, Vesuvius) (cicada is distance)...Dear voice...Dear if each...Dear...Sometimes word, sometimes mind, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes door...Mouse...Is the self-emptying into between so that between is the subjected...Between is soul, is relation, is text...What’s taken away from (in time, i.e. what is re-told, even re-imagined) between is life...It is again parable (between) versus allegory (subject yields object)...I must be aware of the constructs...Always aware...The mystical body is the primacy of relation, it is between...Yes the moon...The soul is anarchy...Necessaries...So anarchy must include a sense of sacred space (self/trust/contract) NO...Is there the difference of interiority versus exteriority in: one gives perception to the table and one gives attention to the table...The giving of attention is self-emptying...In the giving of perception the self is consumed within self-filling...The mystic: one is attentive of the contract...The theologian: one is perceptive of the parties of the contract...So is self-emptying pre-conscious...Is it willed...Or is it the difference between attention and perception again...Libertas...Original point versus body...Can the contract not be the representative...If out-from between is that there is the making of “I” then what of the object/thing...Does it return to the elemental...Is the entering into between (i.e. contract) with table a possession of table, a violence...So table is between there is no efluxus, only the “I” must self-empty to (illegible)...Touch is the foregrounding of table...Is touch always possessive...Blue aster ...Axis...on’s limb vulnerable out-from stone Jacob shutters into house...Robin ...On the one acorn tangential is weight, blue, person...Because I’mflight not dead there is delay and so time...So attention is death, as there is no delay in attention it is outside from time...Cause...Can there be attention in touch i.e. between in touch...Can there be a known separation in touch...The self (that is the capacity for self-emptying)...The touch/labor which is encompassing is between...Between is infinity so long as between is verbal...How does one come away from the other...The out-from between then is a tendency toward totality only...Not imagination but nothing...So the mutual self-emptying is nothing, that is, between is nothing...It is brought/forced to a point with the extending of the words...So my self-emptying in the face of the other is the ground of god... Imagination versus Nothingness...Between is the creation of one body, resurrection, i.e. the death which is the process into between and the birth into nothing which is between...Action brought against the eye...On the one acorn seeing corona...Seeing melanoma, areola, areola, triangle traversing his sternum...Object versus Other...1) object in its essence is self-emptying i.e. it is given over 2) other has that potential but is required to choose attention and the entailing encompassment...In both cases the self-emptied self enters into the between/nothing with the self-emptied other and returns holding more than the self can contain without metamorphosis...















The Journal: Natural Disasters
....traversed the grass beaded assumes various forms...Beaded branch...Open language thins to an arm...Ordinary...Quality....her finger moves over her skin distorting her skin...The earth is distorted itself with these leaves on it...These....An honest community versus a true community...What is ordinary language?....Is it ordinary Language that is the language of communication?...Pedestrian communication?....No...A context which defies context...Real language which has been put into an unusual situation...Real versus ordinary?...Into his thigh community has been sewn....each stitch buckled and some where hairs...What I can see and what I can set down and what I can remember...Is memory separate from soul...Syntax is a way of making memory present....palpable... Knowing my body as I do....your body is separate from the dog’s...Slant the sun....golden is a quality in human skin...Eumenidies...Mastery of death?...Mimesis?...“what is it about tone that you dislike?...I dislike the way it makes a spectacle of the writing as does Narrative and description...What is it about Drama which attracts people....in a piece of writing which is not theater?...This can easily return to people’s need for God...That is this muddle of language which requires so many circuits to (illegible) often accepts metaphor as veracity...Whereas in a writing which is closer to thinking there is little need of circuits...Heaven....location....description versus the Hebrew word for heaven being plural....the idea of plurality alone....one....after death....existing as a true plurality...The soul is an action...Is it assumes with spinneret....egg...sack....abdomen....drama.... attachment...moon hauled on leg points...Dissolves on touch the caterpillar...One third the petals russet with skin...He wrote it as separate from his lungs...In the way their lips slide one to one...There’s a way in which people can blur over the boundaries and make soul...The two of you have a strong soul which I hope you’ll have always...Saying something versus making something would make consciousness a micro-mythology?...Crisis occurs when that micro-mythological template is laid across others...Their myths are different...I can think of things which I did today for good or no and now I can think of alternatives to those previous actions...How does this affect those perceptions?...Is that “actual” micro-mythology altered?...Of course actual refers to its being on the outside and able to be corroborated...This is memory....a micro-mythology...This what it is that attracts people to drama....that it mimics the creation of these micro-mythologies...What happens when belief is withdrawn from self?...Prime mover....is it still?...World as ecstatic...No center...Death....greatest spectacle....yields sex yields the self being subsumed...Released from spectacle...So when I think of tone etc as making a spectacle out of the writing am I simply reacting to the death instinct?...What happens if everything is equally a prime mover?...Cause and effect would be replaced by action and re-action?...Hierarchy is dismantled?...Unity is replaced with process?...This is Love...The leaves shadowed are....more and darker leaves...If one is able to emphasize the boundaries of things (ideas and objects) one is dispelling unity...Does soul still remain after excending those boundaries?...Yes because it is action...Why is this not spectacle?... Is it excending versus transcending only?...To climb out of versus to carry across...Fuscia rhododendron blooms at night...Culpability....Photography...How can one question value without establishing a new system of value...Is something which is beyond value by definition beyond spectacle...Can one redefine value (or remove it for that matter) by requiring that it be excending rather than transcending...I suppose here I’m back to Nietzsche...But would this require abstaining from belief....as belief itself is what establishes value...Is belief not opposed to intimacy....in that it requires only a passive action...Here is the problem with tone which exemplifies the problem with spectacle as a whole...They require a system of belief which bars certain contingencies while setting in place other expected outcomes...Value yields spectacle yields tone...Is only supported by belief...I believe intimately in the immediate structures of the world—the give of flesh....the lack thereof....in stone or wood...The point at which I become a skeptic is when the creation of so many micro-mythologies lays a completely artificial template over those structures....and is not aware of it...Things are not to be doubted....for that matter....neither are perceptions alone....but perceptions in conjunction with a self are to be held if not in a dubious light....then at least accepted as fodder for true thinking and experimenting...If one is blind to the porous nature of self one is likely to be either deceived by its capacity for tyranny and thus become a tyrant or to become a victim of another’s tyranny...Study of the positions of the body...Dante...Beckett...Resound hands move...Photo Graphism...Actaeon yields study yields Beckett yields body position... Actaeon yields study yields Dante yields body as the surface or capital for punishment... Dante manifests punishment as physical pain so does....in his case....the body either:....1) usurp the soul or 2)....become the soul...Beckett also uses the body as a surface or a barrier against which the world reacts...for in him the world is always only outside...Is it always only outside...Is it possible for the body to be a surface which is the result of a tension....or better....a being made tense or being strung...that is an elongation of the inner and the outer so that both are manifest completely in the surface which is body...So that the body changes from being a barrier to being a ground of inclusion...Does this require dis-belief in the self...And how honest is that or can it be...How does this jibe with unity...If each body is a ground of inclusion in the afore mentioned sense can there be distinction...And can that surface....stretched as it is....produce...Is there volition in such a body...Is there difference between writing morally and writing an honest surface...That is in being a body...Is it possible to write an honest image...In many ways this is the problem I have with fiction...It is constantly trying to make something to make images for something which already exists under the pretense of telling the story....but isn’t implicit in that some kind of subjugation of the writing—suddenly it is bound to not be a surface—it is bound to belief in the self and by extension submits itself to conventions which are constantly subverting it...The Rational Violence....Soft breath....red face through determination...A great firm dome....ignorance must encompass you...Quiet granite forced from hand....from expectation of body....the rational violence...What are the consequences of Memory’s usurpation of vision in the writing...Or is that the case...How can one alter the frame of the body...Would this be a manifestation of the rational violence...Or could it be that an alteration occurs in the struggle between memory and vision...Can soul happen without a physical barrier being breached...Is memory or can memory breach(ing) a physical barrier…vision...Gaze and the template of memory possibly can result in violence...Muscle’s belly frames....in this position....the head...Bone at bottom of face having seen it...I remember....here....crux... Tighten accordingly to....“The flowers of the Prunus Japonica deflect and turn, do I not think of you dwelling afar?...He said:....It is not the thought, how can there be distance in that?” (Confucius)... How does one get that sense of looking out of the text...Out of soul...Can one make a text which is part of the world...Once again this comes back to spectacle...Does the lack of narrative forego spectacle...Is the “I” necessarily a spectacle...These “Indicium”...At what point are a set of name’s a set of facts...In thrum all outer form....from vase all possible situations...Object....white chrysanthemum sun...To come to a text, whether through writing it or reading, without the regiment of progress is to relieve it of spectacle... Progress....bullies in temporal locators....which of course lays the template of a long-term syntax over the text...Making like the idea of an experience versus making something an experience...What are the consequences of this way of thinking....not simply for the text or reading but for thinking itself...Is this where one comes to Zen’s “worship” of the moment...Is that dichotomy all there is...Progress versus moment...Is a moment an object...If so doesn’t it “contain the possibility of all situations”...Can a moment choose its own history...Can an object...No...Both object and moment are delivered of History... What effect does the introduction of the possessive pronoun have?...My object...My moment...Are those particulars limited by their context... For example is my object having been used in a particular way for one year precluded from other uses in that context of the “my” simply from habit...Is a moment used...Paradise...Sappho...Horace... Aster seed...Seed aster....forced....each from the five of them...What is moment and object...paradisiacal...redux...Rapidus sol...If a body meet a body coming through the rye...If a body kiss a body need a body cry...What is it....imagination....takes from the world...Tactility...What is it....imagination takes from the world...Tactility...Rachis....was it barbule...Living wing...Thing-events to not experience...Shudder groin...Shudder her head just after...Operators and things... Blueberries...What is “the structure of the world”...This way of thinking requires an acuity by exclusion...Enormity...Is it simply aggression in a text which makes it thinking...Of course....I do not mean violence as such but transgression...Aeschylus... Prometheus literally “fore thought”...Days in those.... leaves transfiguring the (illegible) remains...Is what happens in the text acclaim of existing...Is it similar to proprioception... Does an a-narrative stance necessarily proffer the body itself, or better, a measure of reference...In a narrative progression the context is obvious...Yet here in an aggressive a-narration body itself, not as in drama—i.e. spectacle, is the residual context for what happens...Again back to Soul being manifest out of the context of at least 2 bodies... Bodies or bodies in action...Experience =Soul...Is all thinking breach...Yes...If images are possible do they manifest this aggression...Is there a such thing as world images...I can think of fact striated/layered on and transformed under various pressures...Can this be reduced to a macro versus micro issue i.e. the local “personal” being consistent with the global...Of course one wants to say representative of....but representation is itself simply a way of avoiding responsibility... Again is it simply aggression in a text which makes it thinking...Do I believe in Self...Must....I....History versus Eternal Present....this goes to the idea Attention...Gospel of Thomas taken as life plan...Fiction structure of novel interspliced with Natural history pertaining to fish and birds...Then you are known....dove itself crushed in cat jaws...One’s own self....nothing....here is the dove...Of course strike the evil...Ama nesciri....love to be unknown...Michel Tournier Friday...It is both my hand and the bat—paradox...Subject versus object image...Nekuia a journey to the underworld...Is his “magic moment” or the moment of metamorphosis the same as The Transformative moment:....the point at which cause and effect can be confused... Check...Metamorphosis versus Transformation... Could the self be constituted within every context...The problem with writing fiction is that it just doesn’t seem true...It necessarily has an acuity which occludes...Very red...“Salmacis was alarmed, and she answered:....‘I leave this place for you to use it.’” (Ovid)...Smell of mint after the rain...Soul itself—a place, No—a direction, No—that occurrence of transfer 1 for 2...Soul versus manifestation of Soul...How can one move from a sense of singular self, even on which is constituted again in every context to a true multiplicity...Is this that distinction between Self and Soul wherein Soul requires the loss of distinction while Self chomps at the bit to establish it...I can watch the spider working and smell the mint beat into the air by the rain...These are perceptions which are of a singular context a context in which one can fell the Self...But they are not a context based on dexterity rather they are a context based on a kind of pedestrian panorama...In that context based on dexterity there lies the basis for:....the text....Soul....Thinking itself (i.e. it’s aggressive nature)...So that’s it this dexterity keeps the aggression at its root at bay...Text=Soul=thinking....all in this special sense...Aristotle’s ten “categories:” substance....quality....quantity....relation.... action....passion....place....time....position.... way of Being...Raining glistens...Could faith be simply...Created an evolutionary line for the manuscripts....God?------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Devil?...Corpus....Socius...Is this simply humility versus pride...If so where does honesty fall on that spectrum...in order to be humble one must first be honest....which is a brave thing...But doesn’t honesty require a certain pride either based on innocence or will... Brilliance....agility....subtleness....impassiveness...I am not willing the movement... Squandered is a judgment about the movement...Hand moves up.... tongue curls down....it retreats...There is a mist about the moon as if for balance...Gemini are one-souled... Castor...Pollux...Is the idea of soul as transgressive to the fortified centers of self predicated upon close association...i.e. Castor and Pollux...If it (soul) is spontaneous between people does it require love...Or does it require pure attention...Is this idea of soul truly just anaction...Or is it an action at all....for that matter...Is it the result of an action...That action being the excluding of self which any pure attention requires...When in face to face discourse with someone...2 passenger jets hijacked and crashed into both towers of the World Trade Center....both collapse thus collapsing surrounding structures...1passenger jet hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon...1 passenger jet hijacked and crashed in PA...Probably thousands dead....no word yet... Under the moon...Venus...Confabulation....the glass and people...They are joint... Joined...One destroys imagination with building or field or passenger jet.......Is it...How does the human body end...How does that question differ from Where does the human body end...Does one vilify method...One of the primary engines of this writing is honesty which....I hope....goes some distance toward deflating the authority of spectacle...To proceed by....analysis is a way of exploring the idea of coherence....however broad it may be...Isn’t that fundamental challenge to authority necessary in the positioning of one’s life—isn’t it the egalitary...Doesn’t it require a text which is not invention or creation but which can meet everything/one equally as a “center” so that the text becomes or is.... even....an aggregate of free association whose concern is apprehending and not valuation...In order to be humble one must first be honest and honesty is a brave thing as it requires a willingness to abstain from satisfaction...Aspidistra...At that instant....hic et nunc.......Irides dull from joy into resignation...Templum/Tempus...Is the limit of the body simply spatial...Or can it also be temporal...Is memory a way of extending the body by way of the mind...If this is the case can memory constitute soul...How is the body employed differently is saying....“I remember the angular look of my grandfather’s body just before he died” and “I remember the tingling, almost electric, feel in the tips of my fingers when moving them over my grandfather’s cotton shirt stretched over his ribs as he slept just before he died”...Argument from the absurd...if Nature had wanted...Before a thing exists....its particular time could not exist...Skin hill....If Nature had wanted a detail....an argument...Writing by her face....here soft....6:30 when its pallor....cogent.... with place....its desire origins that smile at time for that smile...Skin hill....The sky directly natural...The “good” will not be something brought in from the outside... Plotinus?...Does it proceed by recognition then....Apple under the skin...Are these texts events of experience...How does language constitute an event of experience...How does the body...Because an event of experience can be an extension of the body is it the soul...(Experience used to be called the soul)...Do they both do it simply through reference alone...Can juxtaposition be a reference...Sure...For thought and sensation to be equally present....which is to say simultaneously present...Not as in a cause and effect relationship....but simply as an analysis of experience...Of course this presumes a breaking of the template of thought...What it imposes is a plurality to the depths of the inner self...Narrative is a violent struggle to contain the self...Narrative is not about experience but about drama...Its primary concern is not having a thought or sensation but about conveying one...Its emphasis is misplaced and because of it both the thought and the sensation are misgiven...How does one break the template of thought...Mostly by breaking narrative...By breaking the idea of whole self/unity...When one realizes the plurality of the self....which of course is to say the myth of the self....one realizes....A world view predicated on Power versus A world view predicated on Justice... Is the radical de-centralization of Power Justice...Isn’t the meeting of everything equally a center Justice...Isn’t that the “Kingdom of God”...Description...I want the mark to stay on the ghost...Does/can an anti-narrative stance subvert the world...In the sense of parable’s ability to do so...It comes back to whether the world proceeds by narrative which I believe it does not...Soul itself resists narrative...Lumen –divine radiation or natural illumination versus lux –perceived light in the eye of the concrete beholder, as the focus of interest...Leonardo’s sfumato...Is clarity inherent in Purity....with respect to language...How does that fit in the context of creating’s being resisting rather than communicating...Something which is entirely pure....of course....cannot resist or communicate because it is solitary—it is pure to the extent that it is insular...What is it which makes turning something into something else appealing...And isn’t that turn inherently dramatic...One must remove the containing of one context within another... Context itself must be broadened...How far can context be broadened before it falls apart...That remains to be seen...Can context be linear only...Is a string of juxtaposed phrases a context...Can an image itself have a context...Is the attacking of context a sufficient resistance...Thought is never innocent....it is aggressive...Honesty versus Truth...Is truth directly linked....as Nietzsche stated....to the feeling of Power...Spectacle is a corrosive to honesty because it’s couched in terms of drama...The transition of a closed system to an open one that is where it is no longer a matter of communication but of transformation...Tintoretto...The name of the hero is the people...Is perpetuation the same as proceeding...If one removes narrative from a text is it necessarily static...No...If one does away with the “vehicle” in any text one must proceed by transformation...This of course is variously manifest:....grammar....syntax....context....imagery (if there is such a thing)...Because the narrative is absent....thought there exists moments of self-reference or subjectiveness....resistance....is....severely foregrounded...That way of thinking comes back to a broad trust in the notion of representatives....whether they be devices or persons...But resistance to what...To being assimilated and thus repeating the current line or world view...Fiction...Show me the ideas you claim to have...The point at which the muscle attaches to the bone is its most vulnerable...Their both being attached to weakness at certain points in various systems...Efficacy...A bird the size of her ear....wind wasted... Muscles....bones....orifices....skin....organs + the idea of conception through the ear (i.e. immaculate) + bird imagery...I’m not interested....simply....in different ways of telling... Am I telling at all...I’d hoped to have a progress of thinking....That is an engagement... Focus on what it is that is breached...What is breached...The hero is called the people... An assumption about thinking and thus the text...Resisting is a way of defeating representative thought...Once again honesty versus community or (family)....Again is the attacking of context a sufficient resistance...Is resistance necessarily solitary...Honesty.... Memory....Eros/Thanatos....body....jesus...Is description a unit...Bronchioles...How is knowledge different from honesty...Both are perceived to be value based systems....I suppose one must make the distinction between nouns and verbs here...In terms of nouns....knowledge and honesty are both value based systems for arranging things...The three conditions of testimony:...reason...information...reliability... Dimples one’s skin... One inserts trusts....immediate acts...Pro nobis...That about the pear wood which revealing Helen...Severe arm/branch....putrefaction...Oh this ghostly beauty...“The real presence of time in the world is called Man......Time is Man, and Man is time.” (Augustine)...A concentration of pigment so as to make the skin seem a hole...happen... Blackberry blossoms at night...Is the perception of oneself mythology?...That or “I am being honest”...Is that automatically to assign a specific value...Does one want to escape value...Is escaping value different from combating unity...Is value complicit in unity... Palm....value...Once again the language must be attacked...Sister is properly community... Available....boys...One can imagine power...Winter...No caps in the text...Experience:.... burning due to cold hands...Habit:....radical clarity habit cold and red cardinal...If one breaks habit does one break reason...Are relations external to their terms...Even if those terms are altered by those relations...Determining to carry (our) thoughts from one object to another to transfer the past to the future...Abscondo... Barbarity....caprice...One can imagine power....desires....this morning....frost....thick rim of the body....yard....then birdhouse versus unified personality...Parousia....Calypso...Who conceals....she...Saliva... through the cave’s sensual rooms....sacred wood and hinterland...Slicks area around the lips....each finger her servant...It is a device....the finger...Each future...His hand into a sparrow....manipulated...Creaking branch adversarially...In this light....could the subject be an image for soul...So long as this notion of the subject isn’t one in which the subject ends performing for the other...So long as there is no drama...If in fact this subject cane emerge of a coalition which is predicated upon an equal de-valuation of subject and other...Of course that would be in an ideal relationship....which is pure fancy...But the flux’s center is that or must be that notion of equality...Because in that vacuum uncovered by this de-valuation soul emerges...That is the problem with narrative...there is no de-valuation....and there is no opportunity for something “great and innocent” to occur.... Only afterward can one ornament its carcass...Blake’s polypus still reverts to myth... Reverting to myth....is fine so long as one keeps in mind that that is predicated on the notion that all myth explains is human desire...To ask the question “why is there anything at all” is to couch it in terms which take for granted a centered self...What happens if the question is phrases thus....“is there anything at all”....Only then follow with the why...Is this because it is a nominative...Do all nouns partake of myth...Can a verb be a myth... White wall...What is related to it...Contiguous....blue...A study of Tiresias...Beckett’s shorter plays “Not-I”...Hunched in description....there....tongue in the grass...Are there any limits to Performing I...Clover...Upon the elm....astringent...I have forgotten the function of metaphor....butterfly...Thought is made in the mouth....Ripping at scenery thought sun contrasts trees....envision...Does beginning the text in the first place necessitate one’s picking oneself out as a subject...Not necessarily....thought often is a default (illegible)... It does set out a point of departure which is at very best minimally scatter-shot...Can the text be the making of a subject...Is it possible to interchange subject/context...Is being a “poet” a social category...No...Is participating in honesty a social category.......One tires of description...Depiction: mouth...Description:....my mouth...Over against roughly that it is the move from one thing to another where both points are affected and hence changed:...1 that is linear thought which valorizes the ends....2 it is thought which is dependant on causality and thus on time....3 doesn’t it ignore a moment by moment progression for the “agency” of moving from and moving to...By the same token is responsibility possible in a moment by moment progression...I think so given intelligent choice...What about the problem with time...As far as the text goes it doesn’t exist...So does that remove causality...One tests its limits....therein lies responsibility...Morning yields night....1 day...17 hours (illegible) (illegible)...Imagology...I have often imagined this...Meditation:....russet...One often imaging this....bound by white....feathers under it....blue wing...Flesh pot...Trove hope trove...What about fluidity of the....text...In large part this contributes to its being taken/made as an artifact...Does fluidity necessitate a hierarchy...Can a text be fluid while being anti-grammatical...Yes....because it implies a grammar which is standard...What about the soul/self....is it fluid...Can it be while also being honest...No....overall the soul is not fluid...Does one accept a fluidity based on desire...Tactics: the lizard....the wood wasp...Sophocles...Gaping iris...Extending the house....moved her arm up....over their bodies hooked her hand down over their heads and blew five lifts skin to cheek.... lips...Corrigibility dulls each slight smack....salving the branch Ability to release an image...Desire...Once a garden just past the garage...Medusa Once intense fascination with its feathers ended red in fact the body formed into a ball....One fascinates with her breast....citizen...Prominent flesh...Stone...Fish...Fiber...Dough... Crack...Block...Breath... How does this relate to my notion of soul as between....Can it in fact only occur in such an arrangement....l’un-avec-l’autre...Could being (dasein) = soul...Another description of the soul/self occurring Now....Now....Now Etc....Only the shock of the instance...Does this constitute time...No....because a progression by instants does not include a past or future, but simply occurs as a present...Sovereignty...It is not numerous; it is more... We...Commandeering...Blue glass vase...Mud the lark adjusts (illegible)...Force rolls from cheek into lip...The three conditions of testimony:...reason... information...Example (chronometric)...Medieval annals...709 Hard winter...Duke Gottfried died...710 Hard year and deficient in crops...711...712 Floods everywhere Etc....So is a progression by moments this kind of chronometry...Doesn’t adding narrative to this attempt a lording over, attempt a controlling and nothing else...Are my texts chronometric...How would chronometry fit in with soul/self...Narrative from the great white blossom....removed... Squirrel hooked up from ground...a word that evokes hybrids and monsters...The marvelous....the natural...and the voluntary...Being is society with Experiencing... Learning...Take into oneself...Consuming...The literature of entertainment...A concentration of pigment so as to make the skin seem a hole...The antinomian Amauricians...Is man’s reason the image of God...What of stances of anti-reason...Would anti-(or non)reasonable acts subvert that image of God or transform it, thus extending the same transformation to God...It would do both...Mythologically....Hand One wants solitude...Severing of body and soul...Metempsychosis...Eurydice from life to death.... from dead again to life....from life again to death...Horrible leaves...Io to cow....the god...The entrails of a hen....for example....turn into a toad...From love of one’s own.... enfleshed...To love of the similar neighbor...To love of the enfleshed...To In nova… mutatos…formas…corpora....of bodies changed into new forms (Ovid)...Marie de France...flesh...In lieu of light she moved her arm up....over their bodies hooked her hand down over their heads and blew into his hair a breath as if she’d been illuminated.... centering the room with her skin and not being able to see out...Her skin shone and blinded her...“By story I mean…real change...In an Aristotelian sense, story involves metabole, the replacement of something by something else.” (Bynum)






The Journal: Illness

Head
Bone of skull.
Dura mater.
Venous sinus of dura mater.
Arachnoidal granulation.
Arachnoid.
Subarchnoid space.
Blood vessels.
Neuroglial membrane separating the blood vessels from their pial sheath.
Pial sheaths surrounding cerebral vessels.
Cerebral cortex.
Superior sagittal sinus.
Cerebrum.
Corpus callosum.
Choroid plexus of lateral ventricle.
Choroid plexus of 3rd ventricle.
Cisterna superior.
Pituitary gland.
Sphenoid bone.
Pons.
Medulla oblongata.
Spinal cord.


Heart
Brachiocephalic trunk (innominate artery).
Left common carotid artery.
Left subclavian artery.
Arch of aorta.
Ligamentum arteriosum.
Right pulmonary arteries.
Left pulmonary arteries.
Superior vena cava.
Pulmonary trunk.
Right coronary artery.
Left coronary artery.
Left atrium.
Right atrium.
Circumflex branch of left coronary artery.
Great cardiac vein.
Anterior descending branch of left coronary artery.
Anterior cardiac veins.
Inferior vena cava.
Small cardiac vein.
Right pulmonary veins.
Left pulmonary veins.
Aoritic valve.
Pulmonary valve.
Tricuspid valve (right atrioventricular).
Left ventricle.
Anterior papillary muscle.
Right ventricle.














The Journal: Recovery

This is not a true reply to your letter, though I (we for that matter) do intend to give a true reply. This is simply to let you know that I did not receive a copy, though ______ read his copy to me so I know you intended that I should receive a copy. It may have been lost or who knows what. If you could send a copy to me I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, I think you should know that I am not angry, but I am confused.

I realized after I had sent the previous email that it was rather pointless to ask for a copy of the letter. I don’t need a copy in order to respond (______ read it to me over the phone.) I hesitate to use email simply because I dislike it for serious correspondence, but it is fast. It is important to preface everything which follows by saying a couple of things: first, as I stated before, I’m confuse and second, as I stated before, I’m not angry.
I suppose I should try to explain why I am not angry. When I asked ________ why the two of you divorced she said it was because you are gay. At that point, suddenly, it seemed to me that the divorce and your staying away was your way of protecting us from something which is difficult to explain. I thought then, and do now, that that must have been the best course of action. By telling you this, though, I am not trying to make you less culpable for your choices; there were also some selfish and irresponsible motives behind them. I am not naïve enough to assume it was better this way and there is no point in speculating. You said in your letter that you wanted to be honest, as do I. I think at this point there can be no other way to be and still hope to proceed. I do want to ask you two, for now, questions: first, what’s your side of the story, second, why now? I can think of other questions, but for the time being I think we need slowly to begin establishing a history before we can start trying to fill it in. You stated that you also have questions, I’ll be glad to answer them honestly, though slowly—this is a difficult thing which requires time, care and respect.

I spoke with ______ and we both agree that for you to send each of us a letter would be best now that you have both of our addresses. By both of us getting a letter, even which contains the same information, we will be able to react individually. Also, I want to stress that any dialogue, aside from the transmission of facts, which is to take place between you and I and between you and ______ must take place individually. Many of the concerns which this dialogue involves are mutual, but many more are extremely individual. It seems that ________ initial questions echo mine: What happened? and
Why now? If you have any questions feel free to contact me, but I will not relay information, again, aside from facts, between you and ______ that will be up to the two of you. I can’t and won’t assume to speak for ______, but I for one look forward to reading your letter.

I received your letter yesterday and want to thank you for being so prompt. I told you in a previous email that I thought it best to communicate by letter, I still do, the reason I am sending this email is that I couldn’t read your return address on the envelope. I guess I got my habit of writing quickly from you. Also, I want to thank you for being so honest, I know this can not be easy for you. Most of the information you gave I knew to some extent, except for the __________________________________. This is something _________ was not honest about. When I asked why the divorce happened, and this was 7 or 8 years ago, I was simply told that you were gay. Over the years I’ve gleaned information from here and there and
_________________________________________________________________. I want to ask you some other questions. But I also want you to know that anything you choose not to answer is fine with me and that my wanting to pursue a relationship with you is not contingent on either your answering or your answers. I guess I’ll ask the hard one first: did you know you were gay when you married _________? I also have loads of other questions along an entirely different line: your life. I want to be as honest with you as you have with me. You stated in your letter that I apparently had tried to find you through the _____ side; the fact is I didn’t, though I had thought about doing so.
_________ may have tried though I don’t know for sure. This doesn’t mean I’m sorry that you have contacted me; I am, in fact, very happy. I don’t know what kind of relationship you have in mind. I’d like to share some things about my life with you but I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. I don’t know what I expect but I do want to try to understand you in some way and I’d like you to feel the same. Just let me know what you have in mind or if you don’t know either maybe we can simply keeping writing and see what happens. I’ll try to answer any questions you may have about me and my life.
_______ tells me that your return address is easily read. So, I now have your true address, but I’ll send the email anyway.

Each time I sit down to write you I can tell the focus of my attention is moving from wanting to ask you questions toward wanting to tell you things. I think this is good, although I can't get over what a strange and rare opportunity this is for the both of us.
Here we are at the cusp of, what I hope will be, an enduring and mutually rewarding relationship. Each of us has here the opportunity to create a self for the other, of course by that I do not mean an invention but a presentation of who each of us thinks we are, which is why I so value the honesty which your letters from the first have strove to require. I want us to always be honest. What you said about whether you knew you were gay when you married _________ makes a great deal of sense. It is amazing how long a culture can ignore or deny something only to turn around and the in space of 3 decades almost completely assimilate it. You said you didn't want the last letter to be about you. But I do, I want to know things about you: your childhood, which you mentioned, your life until now, what you do, what/how you think about things, everything. I, too, don't want you to feel I'm asking too much too soon, but still I wonder.

I want to thank you for the enthusiasm of your last letter; you couldn't have stated anything more perfectly. As far as feeling intimidated by the fact that I’m a writer, you shouldn't, you express yourself very well. What I do isn't something which is impossible for most people if they would just let themselves. Two things which you mentioned in your letter, especially caught my interest: 1) that you are on disability, is it fair of me to ask due to what condition and 2) what things do you do which might surprise me? I'm curious about the disability because I want you to be well and to be able to sustain being well. Do you still paint? I've seen a couple paintings which you did long ago and I'm curious. Do you read a lot, if so what? Being a student of Life is all any of us can be whether we want to admit it or not. There are many people who expend all their energy in trying to fulfill a convention which has nothing to do with them, for whom the phrase "student of Life" is viewed with contempt. Of course they feel contemptuous because they've never given themselves the opportunity to feel something deeply and let it affect everything else in their lives. Also, we live in a product oriented culture which places little emphasis on the paths which lead to those products. But the fact is that the path is everything, in fact the only thing. Honestly I can think of very little about which I am uncomfortable answering questions, so anything you can think of is fine. By the same token I'll let you know that I am an odd person, which I do not say in order to be self- congratulatory nor do I mean that statement as a lament, but only to be honest. I like to do thing my way. I am not a Romantic. My writing is, if any thing, analytic though personal and extremely visceral. I write in a peculiar way and do so because it seems, to me, most honest. I find most fiction too concerned with story, which is to me an artificial sequencing of events. Other things about me outside of my writing: I do not watch television. I like subtle colors. _____ will tell that I am not witty, though I try occasionally. I dislike most comedy, because it seems simply an escape.

I want to write this to you for two reasons. One, in some way I wanted to tell you Happy
Father’s Day which is not to say that I want you to (nor do I think you want to) take
_______ place, but you still are my father and I don’t see why I simply can’t have both.
Second, I mentioned in my letter that there was a slight chance that I might have a book of poems coming out. Well it looks as though I will have one out this spring. Also, I wanted to include this poem, which I’ll begin by saying is very old (I wrote it when I was 22 or 23) and is not indicative of the way I write now. There is something of a story behind it, which is unusual for my writing. In some way the poem involves you or at least my idea of you at that time. I’ll just tell you what happened then type the poem. This was written not as a direct outgrowth of the experience but sometime soon after it. It was primarily an experiment in a way of writing which was then attached to you and this experience. Here’s the story. When I was living in Iowa City in 1993 I went to an exhibit of the AIDS quilt. While the viewers where looking around at the beautiful and various quilts; a speaker was reading the names of victims of the disease, I could have sworn I heard your name read. I was taken aback, obviously. I was sad and confused. Anyway in the weeks which followed something of that experience came back up in this poem, though I don’t think anyone would know it unless I told them. Again, I wrote this when I was very young. You (and I to some extent) are the Hungarian.

Love story
The Hungarian bursts everything he owns.
These are the seeds of guilt. Which the pigeons
will not eat, which the singing birds will.
He bathes in the bone water of a bone tub.
To break now would leave him transparent.
The love of a man is heartbreaking. The Hungarian
loves one. Trees are never cold. Trees
are never beautiful or ugly, but graceful.
The Hungarian is beautiful and bursts everything.
Everything bursts. These are the seeds of desire.
Which the pigeons will eat, which the singing
birds will not. He bathes in the fuchsia water
of a fuchsia tub. The kiss of a promise is heartbreaking.
The Hungarian is beautiful and bursts everything.

I did receive you letter on the 17th. I want to thank you again for being so honest, it couldn’t have been easy. I’m glad to know how healthy you are. I don’t know so very much about HIV. I know that there have been and are people who have gone twenty years or more and haven’t developed AIDS. It is a little frightening, though, I’m sure it was for you, at least when you found out and for the first few years. I am glad to hear how seriously you take your health; there are too many people who act as if they have no control over what happens to their bodies. You never have to worry about my thinking differently about you because you don’t read a lot or because you watch TV or what ever. It is obvious to me that you are a thoughtful person and that you care a great deal about things. I hope it was OK that I called yesterday. I would like to hear your voice. Not that I don’t like the correspondence we’ve had, but somehow a physical voice would make it more real.

I also enjoyed our conversation yesterday. There are plenty of things I’d like to tell you about my childhood, though on some level it would simply be hindsight. I mean taking a frame of mind which is in the present and using that as a template for past events is almost always a mistake. It was a pretty normal childhood, I was safe and loved.

Having both you and ___ here was such a joy. I am constantly impressed by the way in which you have handled every step of this process of reintroducing ourselves to each other. There is nothing which could have been handled with more tact, respect and love.
You have really made all of this seem simply natural, for which you have my greatest appreciation. I, too, felt sad when hugging you good-bye that Saturday night. But, at the same time, exhilarated, whole to a degree I was, and still am, surprised at, and happy. You spoke of ______ and me as filling part of a void in your life. You've done that for my life as well, except it was one which I didn't I know I had. For that I also want to thank you. It is obvious to me that you are a sensitive, caring and generous man by the way you interacted with _____ and _____, also, in the way you write about them. You are a very insightful person. The things you said about how _____ and I are raising _____ do mean a great deal, because you are right on. The things you said about me and what I've done with my life I find very moving. I feel I have so much in common with you. I am very comfortable with you and I want to tell you things. Whether or not there is a mutual Love between us I think cannot be questioned. As to whether there are any bounds that you could over-step, quite simply there are not. I don't want you to worry, at all. Say what you think, say what you feel and I'll do the same. I, too, look forward to getting your letters. They make me happy and excited. I am very glad that all this has come about at this point in my life, when nothing seems the least bit confusing. I enjoy having this conversation with you, because with you I feel a real connection, something which isn't born of simply Time elapsed but which side-steps that notion all together. There are certain relationships which grow exponentially and I am glad this is one. Of course there is more than one side to your personality. You are a passionate person and that passion is equally applied. I lose my temper and am not always as nice as I should be. I am, at times, judgmental and assuming. But I try and it is obvious to me that you do too. I think you and I are similar in many ways even if they maybe subtle.


The Journal: Exploring the Island
One turns to oneself in times of grand stress and loneliness and finds a warm body eager, a-go to the idea of a whirl.
You see what it is now. As a man I push at my nether part, from the soft ridges of flesh gathered above my fist there is the whiff of launch, of extension, but pulled back the ridges smooth, even tighten creating a leveled field. Once again pushing and reaching the tether’s end, over and over; but I am not extended nor launched. Rather than pushing away, as a woman I pushed my nether parts to muster a gathering. I was much taken with the beauty of self-pleasure as a woman, taken with the wet circle, the aggressive stance of a world apart and sufficient.

as her a finger in the mouth, the warm and wet tongue as a companion, to touch speech, full well muscle
as him a finger in the eye, protruding by blinding, for the assumption of power through my own teared over eye

One parts one’s body, or stretches it, according to one’s desire. At a certain point the confusion is minimal and one’s perception is narrowed in order to burst out further. As a woman I was a more generous lover, both to myself and others; though as a man I’ve attempted rather more than I might have.

There is now a ball of light on the lawn which has warmed as he can see its evidences in the unfurling grass; in his genitals the light lengthens both into and out of him, in concert with the unfurling he, perhaps, has shared, fractionally, my insight. The line was drawn and was his body, the island which being redraft is both raked over and ignored, and thus pristine.

Draw the line round and about, largely, so that sized is complicating the definitions. Round about internally: an archipelago. I was alive, he’d thought in the confusion of the spheres, in the synapses between my line and theirs. I was alive so that a ball of light sat warming the grasses and what lie beneath them. The voluptuous curves of the hillocks and vales, rut and strong tree; step and the foot there among whatnot, but asserting; one body the restriction of another; the green, green grass; mouth and push and pull.

It all comes of, if you’ll permit speculation, doubt. Mothered or fathered within the fact that there are things; we are not extended to compose a sip of wine or a tick at the beagle’s back.

We are not composed at all, but composing.
One touches one’s self either through a method of necessity or delight or regret, but the lay of the land comes of it.
Unknowing, from a cloud pulls a car in front of one then the stench of intestines and what one’s method brings to bear is spangles throughout the cloud like lightening or blind stink.
It is elusive only within reacting to it; temperament as a means of orgasm, and thus as a means of revelation.





















The Journal: Of Pots and Canoes
What began the beguiling with names? The relevancy of quest?

Blank.

He will place a ball in your hand which, while wet from his mouth, will retain the warmth of his body. As if in his child’s mind this was an organ to view the invisible life. It will be the size of an eye, though is not an eye. He will not change one bit at being relieved of its modest burden. But you will feel all simplicity drain from you and perhaps materialize at your feet as a dog of some sort.
He will place your palm on the top of his restless head to cap what he will think into place, holding your wrist as a capture which when amended to his vocabulary will leave you with your hand all pins and needles. The wrist will, for him, be all affect. With the moon over the heart he will bend to show you the grasses he will burn then extinguish. This will be a method of controlling a method of control.

Blank.

The house was within him and a circle, a mesh of something with objects. The hill like a head with the house topping; within the hill the house rooted, so that much more was in the hill than topped the hill. The house was within him and a cylinder. First room: a glass wall with bed in lead wire inlayed. Second room: the illusion of depth, the illusion of space. Third room: while the lead is upon the glass, so raised perhaps an eighth of an inch, the bookshelves and books have no real depth. Fourth room: just glass. Fifth room: a window has been painted on the glass.

Blank.

The stones came to acquire the glint of an eye and, by sailing from the other disciples’ hands into the air, a breath. Much of the stones’ fledgling voices were lost first to his robes, and finally to his flesh and bones. They had no particular language, if you’ll forgive their helter skelter pattern at his feet. Once down among them he saw how many times smaller these stones were than the heart. Their indignation was hot, for what was a human heart but meat. Flame was loosed from each stone upon its thrower, who moving for some moments within his flame crackled and fell into a heap.

Blank.

His mouth, in that moment, was Jesus’ mouth and the stones in the hands of the other disciples’ were the hearts of the wicked, hardened and called forth at his word. At each strike against his body Jesus’ mouth was loosed from his, incrementally, until finally freed and spoken into a bird it was gone. From the ground he saw the others as pillars of flame and motion contrived against doubt.

Blank.

Doubt of every variety is rife among these pages.

Blank.

He moves his leg and it is a bribe to the swell to furrow and repeat itself until it has pulled the sands of the beach and curled them up into a gloss of surface then dropped them swirling to the bottom. As it happens, here, there is nothing interior to him; the wind pushes through his mouth and there are birds which flitter in the trees like chinks in armor. He cannot even imagine a word to say.














The Journal: Reflections
I stood as one thunderstruck.

I stand, now, talking this to you, knowing I’ve done so before and will again, with perhaps an altered sequence, and am thunderstruck.

I stand before walls as one stands in one’s own skin, with an all-consuming desire to expand what is encompassed.

I stood with my house in my head, smooth and cupped out of the beach as if an immense penis or breast had been pressed into the sand. Into my house I descended and laid with a small drain at my back ending in a nipple of sorts. Leeching salts were added to fill my house. I breathed through a tube run to the surface. The fluids pulled from me gathered at the drain and discharged through the nipple. My shrinking as they left was the losing of division, the division of Time. This liquid, when provided with a low voltage electric current became a translucent putty studded with bits of grit. When this is molded into a house is it a house or an action?






No Escape
The futurity of an object can neither be called to task nor made reliable. Even in motion and urine yellow the glass ashtray airborne between his naked father and the naked Nearly Furtive, while traversing a segment alluded to by their engorged members, will be a wink of the sun, not a method of escape for either man. Just as one man takes hold of the glass object and propels it, it provides a veritable lens through which to see becomes as good as to understand. Just as rage fouls the air of the room reducing the breathing of both men to a wheeze and both faces to red smudges, DISBELIEF needles its way to the surface, though is at a loss to find an opening.
His father’s smile has flashed to bone.
Nearly Furtive thinks the words into his eyes, YOU, AREN’T, MY, FATHER. And while his scrotum is tight with a kind of love it is not, he admits with a cough, paternal. The question quickly becomes, and broadcasted exaggerates the movements of his arms and legs, WHAT, MAN, IS, MY, MAN, AND, WHY.
While this is the end of their relationship, at least their directives have been established. His father will live on in Texas for the time being. While Nearly Furtive will take on tracking down his mother, his brother and him in order to re-invent himself as a father.

There is a complicated system of preparing a shield: Its first step, this I’ve seen performed endless times in endless places, is to slaughter a favorite animal. Once its blood has been ensconced in a vessel appropriate to the situation the holder of the vessel has a reasonable feeling of security, feels reasonably shielded from the inevitable, but of course is not.

Broken or breaking glass will figure at least once more in this mythology of his first decade. But taken in totus the mythology of his life will be studded with it, gleaming.

















Further Improvements
One can be carried a great distance at the whim of another, on the back of discontent, grief even. He would shape the space inside the car by means of the light’s change between night and day, between Texas and Pennsylvania. He could breathe into the space and alter it into directions unnoticed by his mother. As her breathing settled by thinking STEERING WHEEL, thinking WIND SHIELD, thinking that any carcass beside the road is less convoluted than her; thinking the nouns of the car carried them away from his father’s altered skin, his father’s honesty rearing up to buck her back toward her mother’s heavy word. I imagine him sculpting the space in the little VW Beetle into the shape of words he’d only heard: CHOICE, HONESTY, into the shape of visages so incremental as to seem discrete: the ground corner of a tooth, into anything outside of him, anything cool and constantly moving, say the air from the passenger’s window which hugs its rubber seal imperfectly, say lifting his thigh from the upholstery to let the sweat dry, it was in these moments that belonging began becoming a grotesque glut of which he wanted no part.

Transgression.

Transgress.

To transgress has, now and again, meant to be called out.

One turns a blind eye. I turn a blind eye. By holding breath in his mouth then blowing it out in a plume he has transgressed his body proper and began an encroachment.

I have seen the transgressions of the Father revisited upon the Son to no real avail; the body is the body however hung or crouched. The transgression one must bring to bear is Honesty, which is, among other things, blatant disregard for Future. The hand his hand will grow into may smack his own thigh or the thigh of another and that sharp crack will be so centered as to command the notion of surrounding Space in the moment of that action. When his mother’s stifled sobs, while driving toward Pennsylvania, contort her shoulders and her forearms, outstretched with hands grasping steering wheel, modulate between a structural power of muscle and bone and the passivity of meat by turns until finally there is dissolve he will gasp from the air of the moving car each segment of regret, each segment of confusion and hatred which while wracking his mother’s body reduces it to a vial small enough for a breast pocket and stoppered with something nourishing and perishable, an almond maybe.







A Footprint
One finger has been transformed to a rod, the length of which is undeterminable, only through forfeiting to distance and thus being left for stasis. Forfeiture enters the body by any number of methods; the resultant reaction tends to adjust the carriage of the body, to adjust expectation.
For him the lengthening and the broadening of both his mother’s and his grandmother’s mouths, upon (finally) reentering his grandmother’s house after what he came to recall as the drive northeast during which the idea of Space had suddenly entered him giving him the ability isolate both people and object so discretely that they would continue along as if interaction was still possible, will always be the image of forfeiture. Lament had ultimately settled, and Anger, into the visible forms of his grandmother and his mother while a rooster sent up a call to his chickens in the side yard.
So this was resignation and the first heave toward lumbering within a life resignedly. He carried what little he could as if apologizing all the while to everything he encountered. To the wrought iron little bench, black with red velvet cushion, “I know this isn’t our house, you’re very generous for letting us stay.” To the gaudy candle sconces upon the imitation birch paneling, “I don’t know why we’re here.” To the red wall, “We are here to be away and to be different.” To his grandmother, “Are the chickens always so feathery and loud?”

One can take a tact against the body under the auspice of forfeiture. In this case one forfeits by increment the body entire to extension, toward, what can be thought of as a sacramental, exceeding of the limits of the body. Generally in this instance phrases occur to the mind of the body





















Bones
Glass orifice. An orifice entirely of glass.

There are to events, two recollections, which involve his brother as a child, who has been seldom mentioned in my relating this to you and who will remain so aside these two diversions. Chronologically there is some confusion as to which came first. Chronology has, for me, always been a sore point. Events occur either in or out of the Past or the Future, while I’m out of stasis here in the Present, which while a shelter in name only continues to hold the warmth of a body speaking into the air around.

I’ll say this occurred first.

The sunlight skirting under the eaves of the carport was of an unusual color and intensity. It had the remarkable tendency, on this morning outside the house of a friend of his mother’s, of isolating each object so that all of space seemed to be sucked into it and suddenly the object held the opportunity of resolution, in its new grandeur, of the resolution to his growing concern about Place and whether he had one. He’d looked from object to object lining the half walls of the carport each containing a piece, as it were, of the puzzle; one the lilt of a wrist, another the tenor of a particular name spoken softly through a door, first with longing then resignedness. The object which held him longest was a glass Cocoa-cola bottle nestled on the back half wall of the carport which had been re-filled with a thin, slightly cloudy liquid. His brother was drawn directly to the bottle, took it down and, with a gleeful step, walked into the sun. As he lifted the bottle to his lips the sun was caught in the liquid; what was diffuse through out it was lit up so the tiny congealed masses floating through the bottle took on the aspects of continents rushing toward one another near the bottle’s orifice, perched gingerly upon his brother’s lip. The guilt he felt about his lack of intervention was palpable and washed down his throat. Though through his transfixion with the illuminated bottle and liquid he came to understand that he stood apart from the others, from the object which thus animated joined the ranks of Places he’d not enter, Places his body came to revile as something so much a part of an otherness he wanted no part of, so much a part of the world that any gleaming or terrific circumstance which poked through he took to be the hand of his own mind guiding him beyond it all, toward a direct relationship with matter. He was culpable, at least in some small degree, no? Can one equate culpability with non-intervention among children? Insight has a way of laying open objects and their circumstances to the fact that they work as they are, to the fact that they work with what is at hand to sustain some kind of a presence. What he wanted was to recede.  ¶ 3:16 PM