and what would she have found if she did find that place behing the pool wall where the books were? someone’s uncle’s bible, with a message in it a book of nursery rhymes that reminded her of her mom, before, and left her sobbing in a wreck on the floor a dusty old anatomy textbook and some other obscure medical tomes that made her want to be a doctor a big floppy fine-leaved german text that she can’t even read but that has a note in it, a missive from the revolution reader’s digest condensed books and other random crap that’s totally worthless--but it’s what she finds in the room *behind* the books that matters... and what might lie in the room behind the books? a dead body bones, and an empty bottle a small room with a chair and a half eaten sandwich, like someone has *just* been here--except there’s no one to be found a bunch of drugs a meth lab manned by a really charismatic young person with who she kinda falls in love a teddy bear that makes her go talk to the manager, with whom she’s rather close by this time, who tells her a story about her own daughter that she lost, and then that leads to a quest nothing, just a quiet space that she goes to to think a portal to another world a whole bunch of fucking cheese like literally, just stacks and stacks of cheese--wheels, bricks, canisters, foil wrapped rounds, gift boxes, spreads, and even powders--just every kind of cheese you could imagine a family of rats with whom she has a conversation an entire library, run by ghosts a doorway to an underground civilization where yeah whatever i think i like the teddy bear quest one the best that still doesn’t explain why there is a window with books facing the swimming pool in the first place. then again, I’ve never had a satisfactory explanation of why that was the case at Chase Park Plaza, either. Or if it’s even true, or if this is just one of those fucked up funhouse-mirror type of memories that gets invented like a fucked up AI engine trying to make pictures of things you name, and it doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about because it’s still more A than I, but then again aren’t we all, my brother, aren’t we all. Twisted morphings of legs and inanimate angles and mixtures of animals simultaneously deeply creepy and kind of cool; walls that twist into impossible dimensions and angles that are always close to right but never quite; twisted haunted spindly structures that could never stand in the quote real unquote world, but that draw you in, make you wish, like Alice, that you could fit in there, and so you cast about for the magic phial, the eat me, the drink me, that will give you admittance to this fucked up land; you follow the compulsion to continue in, down, through, even though you’ve no idea what you’re getting into; you could be lost, you could be killed, your sanity could be incompatible with this place and yet, somehow, because your childlike brain is braver than the considered morality of presupposing adults’, none of these caveats occur to you; you cast about, your curiosity creates the circumstance you need; as in a dream, what you need your seeking causes to appear, and you eat, and you drink, and you shrink, and you morph, into a multi-dimensional, fractional-dimensional being at home in the artificial--of course to you, there’s no distortion; relativity and all that you know; you may be stretched infinitely thin as you plummet spaghetti-wise into the black hole, but as far as you’re concerned you haven’t changed a bit. But then again, there are no mirrors around. But then again, if there were, wouldn’t they have stretched with you, exactly with you, twist for twist and warp for warp? Why is everyone else so slow and thick and far away? asks a bluejay perched on a black thick wire over a grey intersection, in autumn, in new york, when nothing much is happening but some leaves and fast-food trash blowing across the street, a hint of rain beginning to call at the periphery of your attention, one random car horn honking once, distractedly, out of time stop in the middle, not the end, or not when you’ve gotten bogged down into second guessing bogus poetics. ok, so she finds a teddy bear. she names it cinnamon. nobody’s of course around, because she’s alone in the secret room. she’s moved aside a couple of the books, so there’s a watery light filtering in through that one square, midway up the squatty wall. she gives in to a juvenile self-comforting urge, and picks up the dusty old threadbare bear and gives it a long, closed-eyed hug. she rocks back and forth. she’s aware of how ridiculous she looks but of course there’s no one around. and then she hears a scuffling noise from somewhere in the dim light behind her.