091313 # finch God. Yes. 081613 # trout Justin's fire 111913 # ostlergundegoot There's nothing in here. 082013 # human LITTLE THINGS Their teeth collided. 081613 # worm I smile. he was too eager to let her go 081313 # copperhead Well? 081613 # worm We smoke. 081613 # worm We smoke. 081413 # copperhead But— You need a nap. RIGHT NOW. 081613 # worm Damn time. 081413 # worm games begin 081413 # worm *coffee* 081313 # copperhead Hungry? 081613 # worm I smoke. 081613 # worm God. Help me. 081013 # dog *We do.  * 080913 this would be rad 081413 # worm bacon/crisp 081613 # worm I was alone. 081413 # worm *refill* 081413 # worm *pack of smokes* 081413 # worm laughing 110413 # fox Let go. 081413 # worm cranberry juice] 102513 # ass clown collies 081413 # worm Have a smoke. 081413 # worm She looks back. 081613 # worm I smile. 081613 # worm On love. 102813 # Shvreqfbopyexhtg ant when you just feel like going kerchunk... bunny pink; male copperhead a piece of the canoe story crow green; responsibility dog fragments from the Him & Me set dolphin both, neither, *that real other thing that I am* eel aka underwater pigeon; fragments of dreams elephant blue; female finch ƒ; five words fox career notes gull orange; teaching, preaching, how stuff works human just another way to have journal entries jonquil a piece of gwen and mary martian three things from today meerkat game; instructions to follow; capoeira pigeon yellow; memory roach you know, stuff in around or about the cafe robot obsessed with tech, natch skeleton bare-bones mind plays snail intracubifications from the TYPEWRITER squirrel fragments of correspondence treefrog fragments of the experience of the teaching profession trout blue; story vulture †; like a grave finch worm other old stuff, food for the soil 081013 # dog *Some air turns into a cup and a sandwich. Can't wait to hear the jingle of the glass door. The buzz of the cash flow. The slam of the dishes. The pop of the unexpected amidst the astonishingly familiar. Table five. The "terminator" table, because it's halfway between the influence of the windows and the depth of the backroom shadows. Jeans-clad asses push down on plain old wooden chairs.* 082413 # gull 2002 Nothing much has to happen. You can make a clipping, even one for someone you've become enamored of such as Esriel, in which nothing much happens. This is the area of pink space, after all. This is the chaosium. This is the macroscopic venture where everything can, and does, and in fact must happen! There are infinite pages. You do not have to certify the stones on the beach. 081113 # gull Wow, this whole thing is riddled with automation that I may or may not remember 24 days from now. But I hope I do. And giraffes hope they get longer tongues, too. It out this was of process. was the : fearfulness, , the for . "Dark " in popular vernacular. was . "It's . Once insight starts eventually back starts work your issues. can't the . This progress." 081313 # copperhead Ha. Sugar for the road. You got some sugar in your tank. Whatever. The weird shit people say. Like, I could do with a sandwich and a cup. Or, I was so hungry I ate the whole plate, even the food. Ah shit, I must be getting tired. Which is kind of fricking lame because we haven't even started yet. I mean. Or have we? Yeah, and so on and so forth. *Holy shit, what was that?* 090913 # bunny I am saying yes, I will come back, yes I want to work with you, yes, I am saying yes and I mean it. Yes. Yes. It is that simple. Yes. When I get home I masturbate with boisterousness. I am unashamed. A bath takes me. The murky walls of my mud hut are laughing, and for once my feelings aren't hurt. Understand, I am telling you this. I am telling you this. No one else can know. 000000 # human Leave the skillet in to season until 6:30. Winter. Smoke. Drums in the kitchen. The snow and the presidential race are all outside. I am a mole in a mole hole. The politics that does interest me is getting to know my neighbors. Let me put my shoes on and we will go out. It smells like hot oil in here and out there like wood smoke. I have had good friends, and have been loved. 081813 # treefrog Ms. Christy says the black kids are much nicer to the white teachers than to the black ones. "You laugh, but it's true," she says to the lunch room. Why would that be? Are they subconsciously preparing to take advantage of white guilt somehow? Getting in good with the management, as they say? Just not as comfortable with what they might think the social limits are? Or what? 120913 # human # demons The self doubt and uncertainty and fear can seem almost overwhelming at times in the middle of the night, can't sleep, trashy dreams, thick emptiness riding up on you, feeling delusional and losing, letting down actual human lives who are depending on you, the information stream that is your self hideously, comically corrupted, the DamnYouAutoCorrect of your stupid soul 083013 # meerkat 2009 Your self's reputation in your own mind is a bugbear. You are smart, so to ask a question whose answer might be obvious is self-destructive. How the fuck about all that. How about start over. Today. Right now. Just like you did ten years ago. Just like you'll do in another week or another decade. Start a new game with a new game board, a new character, and new rules. HAVE FUN. 081313 # copperhead At least in a river system, you never can get lost. Everything is two-dimensional, one-directional. Frees your mind for other concerns. It is the railroad of the forest; passing through each dirty little world, but remaining an elite world of its own. Touching all, enslaved by none. Connecting all, remaining everywhere, but staying nowhere. Every tiny piece of water is the track. 090813 # worm on page 0B10: 6F 72 20 79 6F 75 0D 0D 6F 6E 20 70 61 67 65 20 it says this: get it? (i didn't either) proximity of numerous bodies is no guarantee of a house with people in it (neither is the appearance of solitude. neither is loneliness.) absence of guarantee is no guarantee of absence (however) heartburn and having to piss is (unfortunately?) more real than any of this 051111 # martian 1. When I said the problem with my long days is that I don't feel I'm doing the best job at any of my jobs, Dad said, "Maybe Michelangelo thought, just give me a pillow for my head and I could do a better job painting this damn ceiling!" 2. He said life is just like that--compromise. 3. Sometimes I feel like he's wise, and sometimes I feel like he's just tired. 103013 # human It's not quite hopelessness, but in the morning with a pounding head and stuffy nose and pulled hamstrings, it sure as hell can feel like it, crouched down in the shower with no future and precious little respect. Is it worth it? Pursuing your art? Are you? If you're going to get old, uncomfortable, sick, bent, and probably killed in the revolution, you might as well make it worth it. 081313 # copperhead I wanted to punch his face in. I actually wanted to ball up my white knuckly fist and whip it towards his smugly gloating grin. It was just so fucking typical of the shit he was always saying. He was always dragging out philosophical clichés and delivering them as if he were a hundred percent sincere and as if he had been the first person to ever think of them. I hate that. 081413 # worm Him and Me stop, wring out their wet trouser-bottoms. They lean their scrawny asses up against the majesty of a struck sycamore. Its oblong patchwork of watery green and white supports them with a harmony no wisecracking muskrat could hope to approximate. The one behind them tries, however, and his skittering remarks dance like cottonwood wishes across the surface of the reflective water. 081413 # worm They walk south, inexorably away from all the glorious lights of the city. South toward the black knife of the fabulous river. South toward the dungeon-dark of the wolfen woods. South toward the ridiculous unknown. Let us wish them well; let us wish them all the best, whatever that may prove to be; if not for their sakes then for ours: we who lust for movement and find it elusive. 070308 # eel I crouched at the foot of the bed by her face to watch. She looked at me with a lust-vacant face and said, "How are you doing?" I said "Okay." She said, "Yeah, I guess the only way to really do you in would be to ignore you completely." I had the feeling the orgy was going to go on a while, and I wasn't going to be in it, and I started getting the old real excitement about that. 081613 # worm The problem with tea, is it's complicated. If you don't want a complicated, self-conscious ritual, it's hard to just have, you know, tea. Without dragging out all the spoons, and the bear, and the little starry dimpled plates, and the this and the that the this the that the this the that the the the this and the the htat. Haaaa, hatatatatatta! Tata-toww! Kawhonk-a-WHONK-a-whonk-A-WHONK-a— 082713 # bunny I waNTEd Omsatigo to think I was a bad-ass mother fucker too. I wanted to suck Omsatigo's cock. Him and his dirty feet and he smelled so fucking good. Damn that bitch stinks good. But of course it didn't happen. I didn't get a chance or take any opportunities to do anything hot-shit in front of him, and of course it wasn't a cock-sucking type of weekend. Oh well. It was fun anyway. 010314 # jonquil Had it come from the basement? Something could have just fallen over. It was a chaotic mess down there, after all. The house was big and rambling and dilapidated. Pipes and planks made weird noises all the time. She decided she didn't have time to think about it. One more tardy first hour, and they would start harrassing her to stay after school again. How freaking childish. 081013 # dog *They draw together with a sense of gravity, gravity in the sense of inexorability not graveness, and begin to taste each other's tongues. Slow. Like tasting a peach when you're not sure yet what a peach is or what it might do to you. Welcome them. Welcome them to the outside. Let's hope they can move soon, if not for their sakes then for ours, we who lust for movement and find it elusive.* 091313 # elephant She sits, poised, at a yellowish wooden table that has definitely seen better days. The force of my longing reaches a fever pitch. The reflection in her window shows that it is snowing outside in her world, but in my giant room, the weather is mild. A few stars are poking at the edges of the felt, that's all. Oh god, has a millisecond passed? Then let me spend my life and look some more. 081413 # copperhead But the point is, I used to drink alcoholic beverages with a remarkable regularity, a regularity that kind of sneaked up on me over the course of several years. Once it's a thing you do, it just becomes a thing you do, you know? You stop thinking about whether you really "want" a drink or not, and you just want one without noticing it. It's very unintentional, I guess you could say. 030004 # human GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye. 082513 # worm I saw a piece of something that belonged to me, lying among the quasi-randomness of the landfill. A bright bit of color, staring out of the exposed underside of the human condition. I slowed down to gawk at it, as some people do when passing a bloody wreck. There were no lurid lights, no sirens, no uniforms. It was sunny and quiet. A rural scene with tinges of methane. I drove on. 010614 # bushmill The truck, grumbling by the gas pump, orange and dilapidated, looks as comforting as a fried-chicken dinner to a long lost farm boy. I go towards it, gratitude overflowing my little heart. They're already in there, bitching and laughing like a married couple. Candy and chips crinkle with the power of satisfaction, giant sodas jut out of the cup holders hung on the ::window jambs::. 082713 # crow be open-minded and respectful; don't give up; don't let a crushing, humiliating defeat stop you; have some balls; act braver than you think you are; be loyal to your true group; even if you can't totally kick the wildcat's ass (because you are a kitten), try anyway; do what you can do, don't worry about what you can't do; practice hard; speak your mind even if your voice shakes; sing! 112313 # human We're simultaneously. rich & puny, opulent & squalid. It's an interesting con- trast, I guess, or maybe it isn't. Paint peels & chips off the walls upstairs while Celi takes a bath. All the tiles are on the walls around her--for now. Down here, there's music, warmth, light, toys, books, and we've been fed. Is the food we eat slowly criopling our minds, sallowing our eyes? God, who knows. 083013 # treefrog 2008 The funny thing is, I don't really like English that much. I mean, I like reading, and writing, and talking about reading and writing in certain circumstances, but English classes are just, honestly, not where it's really at. I'd rather be a math whiz, or a science whiz, who is broad-minded enough to have formed legitimate opinions about English, than a freakin' English teacher. 090813 # worm My god is an s&m bitch mistress who doesn't care if i believe if she exists or not. She knows that when the time is ripe i will be drunk and on my knees, begging please to suck to lick to live my whole life over--gladly and with misery, an unspent coin, a flightless bird, an unstrung instrument, an empty house--rotten fruit, never touched, never eaten, no sooner blossomed than decayed. 081313 # copperhead We are lumpish apes molded and fabricated by a specious veneer called civilization. We belong nowhere. We shove our rude planks into the sinuous body of the river. We hurtle downstream as if being hastily digested. The relentless rain washes our worries and our secretions into the rest of the environment. We are poisonous sticks; we are polyps; growths; we are a cancer. 102913 # snail Because of that, I can't see if he's still looking right at me, or for how long. In any case, he sits down, fitting his large long legs with relative grace under a small round table orthogonally across and away from me. I can look at him now, not head-on, and the angles are such that it's pretty unlikely there will be another visual skirmish unless I'm just ridiculously obvious about it. 081413 # worm Me stands at the window, looking out. Grasses lush with sea-salt soak the moonlight up. The willow-haired girl laughs. Her mom is warm in the kitchen somewhere. All life is leaning on this window sill. Inside air and outside air nip at each other's throats. Cool and cooler, dry and moist. Tiny bells spark invisible night-life songs. You don't have to not forget to breathe, here. 050004 # human # robot I NEED A NEW STRUCTURE! I NEED A NEW STRUCTURE! Sir, there's a broadcast on the general emergency channel--I think it's some kind of distress signal. Shall we investigate? Of course! At once! (turning knobs and shit) Yes--yess, I'm getting it clearer now. Wull, put it on the fuckin speaker, bitch! --I NEED A NEW STRUCTURE! I NEED A NEW STRUCTURE!!!!-- 101913 # eel He enters the right key commands in just the right arcane way, and the arcade room he has weirdly shut the other hotel guests out of (he got a weird look but the guy backed off when he had said DON'T come in here, and don't try to hang on because when this thing takes off it'll rip your arms right off!) slowly, sort of reluctantly maybe?, takes off, heading out over the city. 081013 # dog *ME fiddles with the knobs, but no matter what the needle says, the music remains the same. It's on every station! And it curls up, relentlessly, and back in again upon itself as does the smoke, escaping from their two pairs of lips, changing the taste and smell and color of everything in their tiny, terminal, zero-velocity world inside a tiny, pent-up, sealed-in, useless world.* 081413 # worm They people a circle with organisms from their respective worlds. The Snoke smokes, shirtless. The Aviary whistles aloof tunes. Maybe it is raining; it's just not touching the ground. Bang! Bang! Bang! I love you Bang! and the Aviary is shoulder-first, hovering an inch above the mud--the Snoke's forearm, to which the Aviary clings, now provides assistance. The Aviary smiles. They circle anew. 081413 # worm The dog runs, and the roundly jagged river rocks massage his well-worn pads. Small trees whip by him. He follows the terrain as if it were encrypted in his very gait to do so. He runs until he reaches the mossy hollow. It forms an amphitheatre for him, and he turns back into a young man. Him and Me hover at the fringes of the viridine bowl, and watch with a growing uneasiness. 081313 # copperhead Dude, where the fuck is dude? He's the idiot that wanted to take the canoe in the first place. So why am I sitting here, *in the canoe that I didn't want to take in the first place,* getting macked on by the goddamn sun, while he is off somewhere at some grocery store or some goddamn place, doing god knows what, and not being here? I mean, we had a time. We were supposed to be here. 000008 # human Everybody wants to court the poor, or at least not to overtly attack them, because there are so damn many of them, and, at least for now, they can still vote. So if they can't court them with actual policies, or, god forbid, a share of the money or technology or health care, then they court them with religion or fear or reality tv. # crow It was time to do something else/ 110913 # snail Sometimes you didn't really fully feel like working on the wall, but you did it anyway, because you wanted to do a good job for your dad. ... Sometimes working on the wall was the least unpleasant of the choices offered you for getting in your hours that day. And there was no guilt involved, unlike in your normal life, in pleasure-based choosing, because you were still doing work. 081313 # copperhead I still think of him standing up foolishly in the bow end of that stupid canoe. I still think of that, and the way every tree and pebble glided by, every rush, every minnow, every lost bracelet now glinting under history's sun at the bottom of a swimming hole that no-one swims in, the kids, the kids, do they do that anymore? Does anyone get naked in the river now, the way we did? 000004 # human It's a race but it's not just me out here. Little Max, that little fucker, he stowed away with me on my sled. Thought he was a lump of provisions. A sleeping bag. Until he lifted up his head and said, "I want to die." Then I knew I wasn't alone out here with the sad eyed dogs. In the cold. I got to get him back to the warmth at least. I can't just die out here alone, like I planned. 112313 # mistress Beware the carefully constructed compliment. It won't be too doting, as that would be too obvious and you would be disgusted. It will have just enough truth in it, be just barely earnest and uninformed enough to make you feel superior and stroked. It's too easy. That's one of the signals. Until she learns how to make it hard. But if you get that far in, you're already messy with fuck. 000096 # squirrel but i i dont know if avoiding all of this stuff is the right thing to do i dont know necessarliy that it's really what my destinity where my desitny lies what avoiding it.? yeah. not dealing with any of this. not laying my cards on the table im scared to find out what could happen what do you think could? sigh. im scared of uhh that hurts in my stomach that hurts 010314 # jonquil Gwen realized she was fucking famished. Mary put on music while they ate the rest. It was spidery, labyrinthine, instrumental. Again, Gwen didn't feel like being the one who said what is this, so she just let it surround her and interweave the spaces around and between them. ::The curtains moved again, and Gwen wondered why they were pink. Nothing else about her friend was pink.:: 062904 # human Amen hugged me before we left LA. Gume sez Jorge, the guy whose notice I thought I was completely beneath, said I need to release my hips more, stretch out, stop holding back. Sapo fell out, but he's okay. Compreyu is a sullen, self-absorbed teen, but he's okay. Gume is a real guy who needs me as much as I need him. We walked on the beach. Maybe next year I'll actually jump in the roda. 081413 # worm And then the bronze foot, tiny with perfect musculature, with which he was so recently painfully acquainted, heaves into view again. That's how Ltiky knows he's really awake. He can smell the foot now. Now it's close to his nose, but moving exquisitely slowly whereas before it was moving at full kick-speed. Now he can smell it. It smells like a warm dog's paw with a hint of mud and perfume. 010314 # jonquil Mary's cut-off FUCK THE HELL OUT OF BEN t-shirt barely covered her fine, pale ribcage. Her green plaid boxers only covered half of the second installment, that she had carved two days before. Last night Gwen had reverently traced the words with her fingertips, then ever so lightly, trembling, with her lips: > thrashing in the dark. Inside you > there's an artist you don't know about 000096 # squirrel i think because most people are so caught up in doing what needs to be done to have what they think they need to have that they're not able toreally be. anything. the act of pursuing the havingness directly affects beingness. its like the more concerned you are about what to do to get what you want the less you really Are. Really? okay. let me see if it's anything like this: when i sit down to type something and i start thinking about how i wwant it to make me feel when i read it later, it gets harder and harder to type, more and more futile and dare i say boring. i think so. yeah i think that's it exactly almost. 081613 # worm They installed a news ticker. It's one of those red LED jobbies, just constantly scrawls meaningless important shit across it all day long. Things about the national soap opera, who's been assassinated, who's at war with us, how bad we're kicking all their nigger asses, etc, etc. It's news. Right now it's saying, Angst and anguish pour out of the very walls of our very own jail, day and night while the innocent sleep. Our infustigative reporter shows you why you shouldn't care. And then it's some kind of commercial: Get out of jail free—if you have excellent credit, or are already out of jail. 040708 # treefrog I'm just really not in the right profession. I just really should not have done this. This really fucking blows. I don't want to do this. I really, really, really have no interest in insinuating myself into these situations, and trying to, I don't know, prove something or whatever the hell it is you're supposed to do. I have no interest in "relating to them;" I have no interest in "reaching them;" well, whatever. That's not completely true. But I sure am afraid I'm not going to be able to. I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm pale, I'm shivering, full of fear, and about as unvigorous and uncool as I've ever been. This fucking sucks. 081613 # worm I am looking at the wall, only there is not a wall there. There is only a screen, and as we all know, god can see through a screen. I am looking at the space where god used to be, la la la. I am looking at an astonishing phenomenon: how many times typographical errors speak the truth and output results better than the ones you meatfisted on purpose. You hamheaded hock. You freak of typomastic denature. You are in the alley on your back, haunting with ethereal beauty. The old sweetgum rains down upon the garage roof. Soon this will all be rotten ruins. I am looking at you. I am longing, and I do not even know what for. 000002 # human you have to do a little sailing whenever you go sailing; other than that you're on your own. 000097 # human # emeraldcity I want to cry but I can't seem to. Something's too tight. I left something in that patch of tan grass, hidden among the rustling wide blades, nurtured by the silky wind. Yeah, I think I left something there, something that fell out of my pocket and is surely gone now. Maybe it is still there. I don't think too many people go and sit in that same spot. I said to her, "We'll have to remember this place." She said, "We will." And I forgot all about it until tonight. 010514 # bushmill For a moment, I know this can't go on forever. There can't always be restaurants, and truck stops, and endless highways. It has to end. I may be a dropout, but I'm not stupid. My heart hurts more than anything right now. I just want to stay here, between these two burned-out weirdos for the rest of my life. And I've never had a clearer sense of the end of it all. There's another church on the right, slowly passing by, an older one, with spindly spires and ornate windows. There's no cutesy billboard, but behind the silhouettes of the graveyard, the sun sets like a stop sign saying stop! stop! Go back! Stop time! 081813 # treefrog So I saw Travis from 5th hour at McDonald's after the damn van wouldn't start. He said, Hi Mr. Schulte, and I said, Hey Travis. I was glad I remembered his name. He's one of the ones who are easy to remember, I guess because he's not one of the ones who seems to look or act exactly like a dozen others. Anyhoo, he and his friend actually came out to the parking lot and poked around under the hood of the van. We didn't get it started, but it was awfully nice. And I wonder if that would have happened if I hadn't given him a pencil that day. That day when he said, "You're nicer than some." 022613 # worm Well, yes, her. Ha! What can I say? Nobody said this world had classic, linear, diametric, didactic badguys and goodguys. Yeah, she's evil, and yeah, you have to watch out, but I'm not going to tell you she's like Satanette or some dumb thing. I'm not going to tell you this whole thing resolves into another dumb Star Wars rerun where we have to kill her with teddy bears. It just ain't like that in (this) real life. I mean, you can do what you want. Just don't get your pecker cut off cuz you'll probably end up bleeding to death and I'm going to have a hard time explaining that to the boss. Ha. 081413 # worm The truck rumbles on away from the night. Dawn approaches. Somewhere out there is a context to put all this in, but Him and Me don't have to worry about that yet. They may never not have to worry about it again. It does not occur to them to try to analyze the odd privelege of their situation; they both appreciate the moment with wordless ease. Him's arm is around Me's shoulders. They are buried to the neck in everyone else's excrement. They are broke and exhausted. Dried come makes their skin prick against their clothes. They don't know where they will get dumped out. They have never been happier. 022513 # human That's just it, isn't it? It all comes down to that. That's the ultimate vulnerability. There's so much power and emotion in my relationships with the girls, so much at stake; it's the one relationship I can't ever, ever walk away from, fake, or ignore--when the vulnerability comes into that realm (and that realm is omnipresent in my world now, most especially now that there's no spouse to pass it off to or even divide it up with as I assume most people do), it's huge, it's vast, it's terrifying but I can't run away and so I chow down. And think vague exciting thoughts about being a writer. 000096 # squirrel well i guess im flattered because i forgtet or maybe i never knew what diffrence my living or dying makes on anything what do you mean you always try to be so cool and stay so cool and i always thought maybe up uintil now that no matter what i really did it wouldnt matter cuz you had other friends and other connexctions and cuz you were above all that yeah i'm afraid there is a selfprotectiong part of me that reacts that way tries to keep it that way but sometimes i manage accidentally or on purpoose i dont know whic to shortcircuit it and realize thats not really who i am. really 102913 # snail His beard hair is a little red--the red curling against the white makes me think about his pubic hair, and that messes up my carefully measured Hey what's up, and turns it into something more like Hergnzt.... But by then I'm already a step and a half in the direction of this is not a conversation, so I proceed to the grimy bathroom door, push it open, and retreat into its reverberant shelter. 091313 # trout # roach She rolls her big cow eyes, and heaves a ridiculously sexy sigh with her big powerful chest, and while the man continues to clomp, clank, and jingle around the cafe, she lights up my fag. 081413 # worm The circle opens and assimilates Krim. It happens seamlessly; the rhythm never breaks. But somehow the circle traps Ltiky at its fringes. The obvious eagerness with which the grinning, shining men work Krim into the dance is matched by the effortless indifference with which they wordlessly delegate Ltiky to one of the drums. Determined to be at least a part of this thing from which escape seems no longer possible, Ltiky joins in the drumming. His sense of rhythm is adequate to the task; the rhythm is simple on the surface. His confidence starts tentatively to return. To drum for dancers--there's no shame in that. 100913 # human Especially around so-called political issues, people often conflate, say for instance, "bills" with "hurricanes". Human constructs with natural forces. The knee-jerk argument against the affordable care act that goes, "Why should I pay your bills?" might be rephrased as "Why should I behave cooperatively?" or even "Why should I care about you?" Why not just come right out and say it? Why act as if "bills", and your luck in being able to pay them, are a manifestation of some kind of fundamental natural order? Leaving aside the gross hypocrisy in the question, what's the deeper question that it avoids? 010314 # jonquil Gwen opened the door just wide enough to permit Bozos scraggly frame to wiggle through, then closed it again. The dog still had the nubbly bone, and he took it immediately up onto the lower bunk (why did Mary need ::bunk beds:: for just herself?), spun around twice, and sat down staring out at the rest of the room in perfect contentment, not chewing, just staring, seeming mercifully oblivious to the ridiculous pink bows Marys mother had affixed to his twitchy little ears. 081013 # dog PORN: The pipe's cashed. CHOLULA: Not me [giving her wide, pale ass a shimmy as ME licks her sweet, sweet butthole clean]. 021013 # eel I was the only civilian on the ship. They were all in grey uniforms; I was wearing red/orange street clothes. It was allowed, there was some reason for my being there--I was some kind of passenger but more like a ward, less than a full man. I had taken this trip before. But I told my brother that I couldn't do it anymore, it just wasn't feeling right, and in the last instant as the great freighter was pulling out of the harbor, I made a jump for it, and missed, and landed in the water. Later, they were looking for me. I had a vague feeling, with the dread starting to creep back in, that I was some kind of fugitive. 090913 # cael Cael's kitchen. It's not so much a question of whether you're cool enough to hang out here--you're not. Stories are not good and bad, says someone wearing a cute, short summer dress. They are merely pervasive. Someone else, in a doublet and two nipple rings, holding a French horn, requests clarification. Pervasive? Or perverse? Hot cross buns steam anxiously on the range top. Perverse for sure, says Summer Dress at last. A lump of butter sidles down one bun. Tentatively we'll say pervasive. Agreed, says French Horn. Lingering by the ajar refrigerator, you fumble with tobacco and fire. a tiny clit of light cupped in an azure votive glass the librarian's words lingering like an eddie in a spring rain formation somebody's awake, their footfalls make the stairs ache "Sometimes you find exactly the book you're looking for Sometimes you don't, and sometimes that sucks But sometimes it means you find something else you didn't even know You'd love, and you never would've found it if..." tomorrow I'll sit up straight at my desk faded in denim tight in the remainder of youth Write whatever words I can, because I can't remember exactly what she said tonight 082404 # human Just sitting here having dinner and Megan is in her chair eating some grapes. She's finished her clam chowder, of which she was quite fond. Anyway, the way she looks at me sparks something--for a moment she is the girl from the dream, the Megan in the woods. It's her, with her amused / faraway / sad eyes. We look straight at each other for a little bit, and it's as if we're trying to remember where we know each other from. In what distant city, during what great war did we meet? A few minutes later she starts swinging her legs and singing Winnie the Pooh, smiling mischievously / guilelessly. 081413 # worm Approaching sirens begin to wail in demonic disharmony with the ringing in Jelse's ears. It's not going to be just the old cops. It's going to be the military. There will be no negotiations. People are disappearing, the ones who can. Back to the night, wretched dream creatures. Jelse's truck is fucked. Jelse grabs the thermos in an unconscious reflex of parsimony, and abandons his old friend. The door falls off. Jelse limps his way down by the loading ramp just in time to see a man in grimy overalls wielding a pipe, and the stunned trash truck driver trying to climb out through the smashed windshield. 081613 # worm How about the locusts outside my bedroom window at Dad's house? Were they really locusts? Does it matter? They sounded exactly like streetlights would sound if streetlights were friendly, organic, ancient, and merrily sad. The slow rise. The insistent, symphonic, triumphant sustain. The sawtooth singing of celestial impermanence. The explanation of the night. The exclamation of raw, cold neutrality as stained by the blood of prepubescence. The window. The metal box fan. The metal screen. The streetlight. The neighbors' house. The unreality of green. The locusts. Falling. The locusts. Soon, they will rise again. 081413 # worm Omsatigo does not subscribe to your magazine. But he might be reading it in the bathroom while he takes a massive, hot, satanic, slippery shit. He doesn't flush and he leaves the seat up. He smokes in your living room. He doesn't heed the qualifiers that tell the rest of us do-good bad-boys when to stop. That is why we worship him. Because we cannot control him, and we have chosen not to control our lusts. We justify our chosen path: He ain't as bad as all that! But he is. He is. There is no path. There are only our choices, one wrong after another‚ or many, simultaneous, side by side by side by side by side. 090913 # squirrel Purple, blue, and yellow...the color of joy. Depends on how close I am to the phone. Hannah Leprechaun, Matthew Badger, Living. Not being afraid, love, family, friends, challange, travel. A bagette with goat cheese and an apple on the steps of Sam Hill. A fresh sugar cane at the bottom of Finger Canyon. Raw oysters with homemade coctail sauce and Blackened Boner beer;). Fresh shrimp and baked potatoes cooked on the beach. All the foods we ate while on trail with Watteau, even the stuff I couldn't stand. dark chocolate. It is fine the way it is. I like brown. Yes, yes, yes, yes! I agree with Zonda 000094 # human there is a downward spiraling pull, that we talked of in porter's class. ray carver fought it and, apparently with the help of tess gallagher, won. i can feel it pulling me. ME, of all people! jus goes to show you how it works. you don't wanna believe it can work, so you never quite pay full frontal attention to it, while it sweetly eats away your soul. you smoke dope and get codependent with your best friend and think of future things anything but the present in order to distract yourself from this tragedy, but it ain't gonna help. you direct your concern the wrong way: "Why am I smoking dope" instead of "Why am I giving up?" 081313 # copperhead I had a conversation lately with my wife about him. Weirdly, it didn't go so well. I don't know how to explain it. I mean, on paper it looked good. She invited me to invite him to visit, to stay for a while; she was the picture of open and inviting enlightenment, but maybe that was just the problem. Maybe her sympathy—her *sympathy*—was so telling, so indicative of his becoming a disease, a sad nostalgia, a wraith of an imaginary Peter-Pan past. If I succumb to her sweet graciousness, I accept, I sign on the dotted line, I agree that he—that we, dammit, that we—never really existed. 081413 # worm # roach Both of them feel a touch arthritic--the stiffness of joints is counterpoint to perfect humour, in a cafe such as Esriel's--when they swivel their necks to see a fire truck blast by outside. Its swirling gouache of sirens washes through the whole cafe, making the neon temporarily dim by comparison. Hanad, rose in hand, ambles over by the glass to watch the truck fishtail out of sight. Sadness comes back into the silence left behind, but it is sadness of a different colour, one that she can stand, one she knows she can unselfconsciously share with the great grey bear on the stool at the counter. 000096 # squirrel i mean are you feeling okay that we;ve talked about htis theres this sort of delay like were on an international phone call. but yes, i do i think i am just a little overwhelmed. dfont be overwhelmed why not well its not like ive grown a second head or anything spooky like that im still the same person you know imean well you say that, but do you realize how long its been since i turned around and looked? y yewah anmd ima little afraid of that but all im saying, or all iwas trying to say but my timeing was hampered by the damn keyboard, is that for all i know you have grown a second head. 081013 # dog *It's not quite raining yet, but it will be soon. ME is hunched over his new toy. He has just discovered something, namely, that when he flips the switches and dips the pips in a certain secret way, the answers to everybody's questions get projected on the abandoned drive-in movie screen under which HIM and HER and ME are awaiting the thunder. Too bad a jumble of answers out of context tend not to make any damn sense. But HER doesn't care, bless her heart and her firm, creamy legs. She's having a blast. Don't you love her for that? I do. One rain drop kills itself on HER's pert nose, making her more beautiful than ever.* 102913 # snail # featherwoman And I couldn't get to sleep because of the movie energy pulling me somewhere, somewhere away off left, over the dark wet grass of the commons, out past and above the airport, into the glowing dark, past all the exciting places you told the girls you'd flown or floated to in all your exciting jobs, and I wondered, and I had to actually do that sideways ladder climb half touching and mostly not touching your legs to get to the dresser to get my phone to make a note about it, I wondered whether or not that real big life and death big music charging ahead movie love can ever be possible again. 053103 # human # roach Well. So this is the end of May. It's gray, dingy, dismal, drizzly and cold. I couldn't get to sleep last night. I almost did, but then Ann came home earlier than expected, and my breathing changed, my alpha waves got choppy, and I stopped thinking about the things I had been thinking about. Like things it is a sin to say, and "anything can be in the cafe." And so on. Other crap like that, just flowing in and out as I oscillated toward blessed rest. Megan was rocking beside me. I had rocked her to sleep in my arms, and tho my back ached, it was good. God help me. What am I going to do. 000096 # squirrel i mean directly in relatinon to things we talke about and do , i ask myself things, i mean i look at parts of myself with a diffrent eye than i ever would otherwisde, thigs i am so used to taking for granted, and things that it seems my family and my friends just allow me to take no expect me to take for granted, and theser things i find myself looking at, difrfrently i dont even know exactly how, just diffrently, and i can actually hjoold them up toi the light and say, do i want this, is this really me, what the hell is really going on here. and apart form that, we just have a lot of fun. 081613 # worm When we started, I'm trying to think, there were, as far as I remember, ten of us. Most of the time it was me, Milt, and Margie in the cab (Milt driving of course), and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 piled in various configurations in the bed. Orange paint from the seventies blinded the sun as we caterwauled down the first of many highways. Every highway has a soul, and every highway sign is an eyeball. We sang songs. We drank root beer floats half brandy. In those days, it didn't seem so terrible to drive drunk, because almost nobody used the roads. Yeah, you might kill some corn if you careened off into the ditch. 000096 # human for some reason youre inside here, and i'm driving around and i dont even exactly know what youre doing here because i'm driving to work, and you don't work, you don't have to have a job so what the hell would you know about it anyway, and guess i just tolerate you because i vaguely know i should, but i dont really know why and it doesn't seem to matter much anyway because you're just hanging around kind of quietly not really causing any trouble but sort of hanging your head from time to time and youre not a bother at all really, in fact, occasionally, i actually kind of like you 010514 # max Worn-out tennies jab at the packed path around the merry-go-round, until they push, and leap! and ride, in dizziness and midnight swirling spin-art streaks of light. 081013 # dog HIM: I've noticed most people resist the momentum of the intellectual and spiritual fire that begins to overtake even a (passionate) neophyte engaging with any real art. ME: Leaving aside for the moment the definitions of "neophyte" and "real," let me ask you this: Is passion a transitional phase, or a foundation? HIM: Both! ME: Awesome! *Because this is the land of not only passion but also imagination, they embrace.* 081413 # worm Him and me walk on down the plank highway, among the reeds and willows. Me runs on ahead, on down toward the sandy beach in the days before the river stank. The willow-haired girl is waiting there for him in a cornflower dress. She's wearing her hat. The lantern is low. Me holds out his arm for her; she boards the stolen boat. Me pushes off and pulls his last foot aboard rakishly, a moment before certain soggery among the writhing weed-weirs at the water's edge. She smiles--good. He hasn't overdone it yet. He plies at the loamy bottom with a long pole. The boat abandons its former master, and surrenders to the current. 010314 # jonquil Finally the moment came when she felt she had to shut off the faucets. The old water heater would be spent soon anyway. She reached past the faded blue shower curtain and grabbed a towel off the rack, bringing it back inside the shower with a minimum of cold breeze. She dried her hair and torso briskly, but gently patted her shaved legs. They felt fresh and good, and even better after they were lotioned up and she had put cotton leggings on. She grabbed a t-shirt and a flannel off the pile of laundry on her bed, and headed downstairs, awake enough now not to dread everything so much. 120912 # human It's my fault. I fed her the lies I needed to hear. Everyone else did, too. By not so random chance, she connected with a monster who did the same thing. *We were all the same to her.* The power of my fantasy overcame my judgment; at any time during the *x* years, I could have stopped and said, this doesn't make sense. Every lie came with a pre-packaged excuse to believe it. Every lie was wrapped in enough plausibility for a desperate, needy person to rationalize it away. And that's what I did. Over, and over, and over again. No matter what "my sexuality" is, that's the part I can't go back to. That would be suicide. 081113 # crow # human Thing just happened. Shaney Comp was over here playing with her brother on our old beat-up swingset while we were having supper. Instead of getting all "get off my lawn," I just let it be. Then she scraped herself on the old torn-up tubing. Thought for a minute, then got alc swab, neosporin, & band aid. "Mind if I clean it?" She kinda laughed, Megan said, "See?" cuz she had been telling her all about the horrors of infection. She said ok, and I cleaned it. She said it stings, but was very tough about it. I patted her leg, she said thank you. I feel like Boo Radley right now a little bit. 112413 # human THINK. all those naive ages we worked or played or lounged or fretted through. never imagining it would all lead to this, and of course we know that this is now, now; the "end of history", right? Except we're so much wiser and now we know that eventually we'll be looking back at this and thinking the same thing about *now* that now we're thinking about *then.* Except I'm not sure we really do know that, not really. I never planned to be poor. I never particularly planned not to be, either though. Not saying being poor gives you wisdom, certainly not nobility. But a perspective, yes, that I'd be prepared to provisionally believe. 081413 # worm Past a plastic kiddie pool gone the colour of the sea from disuse, in the next backyard over, two little girls kneel in front of a tidy yet rowdy patch of brown-eyed susans. The yellow petals throw the sun all over everything, including the fearless turquoise of the wall behind the flower bed. One of the girls' dolls is missing a head. The only thing unusual about their ingenuous play is that only one girl ever speaks, though both girls' dolls bob their bodies in animated conversation. The doll who talks out loud always seems to know what the doll who never speaks is really saying. Him and Me walk on. 081413 # worm Pnanyl breaks their fall, as she always does. She gives out a plump Oof! as Pudob bounds against her, already slick with cool, gritty mud. He pumps toward her, but she tenses, and rolls out of his reach. His questing tongue finds only mud. She scrambles astride his back. She smiles a violin smile; runs her bow along his keening spine. Suddenly liquid, she pours forward across his back. Her plush breasts comfort his weary shoulders. She arches into him, catlike, curve for curve. The sun freezes the moment as a single dragonfly, mother-of-pearl tinged with amber, lights upon her upraised ass. 081413 # worm Ah, down by the lake. Down by the cold, sweet, calculating lake. Down by the lake with Bnabe's ghost we go. It's a time of radio. It's a time of machines. Old machines with their names embossed, engraved, imprinted on their metal faces. Back, back, back, back, back in the days when machines still had faces, when you could still read the names of things. When your boots knew the way. When you could still pronounce the names of every rock bit by your boot; every pebble, every squirt of mud on the way down the path to the lake. Down, down, down, lord, down to the lake we go. 081313 # copperhead But now we're walking, a couple of reedy rats in an anonymous old downtown. These little towns all look so familiar. All so endearingly square, with just a touch of the sinister lurking beneath perception, just enough to keep them from devolving into quaint. I always wonder what it looks like and sounds like inside the heads of the people who actually live here. Are there any young people here? How do they live? Where do they work? They can't all work at this diner, whose bells clatter and clang as we open the door and face the cool, quiet not-unfriendliness within. 000097 # worm All was dark and swirling. The roads became icy. The witch's knuckles became clenched. We had to switch off driving to not go crazy. Much of the relaxation flew out the window into the haze but a certain warm green light of it stayed at my soul's center and I don't believe has ever quite left. I think that is why I enjoyed the death-defying journey back so much. With that little green light going, I knew it was all okay. All part of it, or something. Or maybe I didn't know that. Maybe I was just having a good time way the fuck out there in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, I think that's it. 102913 # snail # featherwoman The movie was pretty good because it had life and death and sacrifice and nightmares and helpless people taking care of each other and becoming a tiny bit less helpless, and greed and gore and tenderness. And it pulled me away from where I was, the way movies have been doing for years and years. Because pretty much every movie that pulls at me at all is some kind of love story, and I have yet to see a love story that really sits right on top of my chest and holds me down and spits in my mouth and says, I'm yours and you're mine, right here right now. 111213 # robot # human Why does the NSA have a huge black cube of a building, looking scary, sinister, impenetrable, just like alarmist, precautionary fiction? Are they *trying* to be like 1984? Is that the big joke? The joke's on us? While we're sitting here writing all these books and essays about America, and how horrible it would be if it was as horrible as, *this,* for instance, wow, really makes you think, they're busy taking notes, gleefully clucking and gabbling, saying, Yes, yes, yes, keep the ideas coming! and building our own nightmares out of the stuff of self-expression. 102913 # snail # featherwoman I noticed in the kitchen that I didn't look at your eyes much, and I wondered if you were noticing that too. 091313 # elephant She was skinny and naked and spread-legged on the antique persian bakhshayesh rug. My slender cock agreed. The earth and red tones pressing against her pale, oiled flesh sang a symphony up into the air-conditioned confessions still bouncing around the room. God, how I had waited for this. 090913 # roach go to the Lake skip, flip, slip or waddle through the mud to a time, any time, make it twenty years removed go there now. 000000 # eel There is more youth and beauty here. Kids whose parents have brought them on business trips or vacations. A tightly-knit species of trim-haired people with burgundy cars and clean, white, cross-training shoes. They seem to be functioning according to some unseen clock. Groups of them at this end of the pool, bunches of them at that end; they all seem to know where they belong. I am only ten or twenty feet away from the beautiful, long, wet, stringy hair of one of them. She moves toward me. I get up and go. I do not want to be discovered and thought to be lurking here. 102913 # snail Here's my sneaky plan for nano: Do the fifty grand, but keep *derrière la tête* the idea that if I can harvest a 10K story out of it, it will have been worthwhile. 101503 # trout Smoke! Help! I am dingy over here. I can't even suffer for her tits, for her boots or for anyone. My tongue lingers over the memory of the taste of the shit she prances through on her way here every day. Back when it was me here waiting, waiting, laughing at the willing compromise of my own untouchability! But now.... 000002 # human Given that apparently I'm going to get married, I think it's very important that I get married in a skirt. 000006 # human # roach I feel as if I'm riding on a spiral arm: I'm inches away, hyperdimensionally, from my old life. I'm literally sitting in a cafe on the Riverwest/East Side nexus, typing away. I could go outside and be down in the river in next to nothing flat. But I still wouldn't BE there, would I? It still wouldn't be the same ME down there, making footprints in the sludge, even if I could bring myself to fuck-it-all and pretend it was. Travelling along the spiral, I'm light-years away from that stinkin' river. And that's okay. I don't really want to step across the gap and go BACK. But.... 081413 # worm Me sees ancient Greece outside the window. Only it's not ancient in terms of the dimness of memory, it's ancient in terms of the future of the imagination. The sun is shining the same way it shines today. Amazing. Absolutely no-one has ever realized this fully before. Realized this, fully? Or realized--anything--this fully? Ancient greek clouds, looking fresh as pure water, drift hodge-podge-cottony across the intensified sky. There are columns out there, massive elements of stone that still think the intellect has a chance. Me sticks his head out to catch a breath of it all, before it's too late. This is the essence of philosophy. You can't write this stuff down. 110413 # fox Let go. Free yourself from your own style. Yes you've seen this fox somewhere before. 072302 # eel I said sure and he put a black collar on me, and gestured with his hands--I complied, putting my hands behind my back as if they were handcuffed. Then he tickled my ribs so suddenly I cried out and brought my hands around to the front. He tsk'ed at me, and I dutifully put my hands back behind my back again. I was getting hard and juicy. He said "You will call me the Minister," and I said yes Minister. The lankier, taller black guy to my left looked on, grinning. 082113 # human Everything was just right, like two marbles clicking together. Like the phone ringing and a strange, good friend saying hello. Like waking from a dream of safe mediocrity long enough to see that yes, this is it, this is the real, cold, wet, aching world, full of music and going somewhere, through shifting constellations and ghost-ridden nebulae to the mystery planet, the place we all left home for aeons ago, the place we forgot we were trying to find as we played cards and smoked and drank mochas in the corrugated corridors and crenellated crannies of our interstellar vessel-- 081613 # worm And then. And then, um. There are tinkling noises in the creek behind your back. You turn around slowly, not because you think you're going to see a bear, but because you're petrified of what might happen if you don't see a bear. You don't see a stomach. You're scared stiff. I wish I could explain to you how stupid you are. You ride up here in your car. First of all, anyone who drives a sedan is a total Dick and Jane. Anyone who can't fucking toddle on their lap all the way across the desolate tract is dumb cane. You're dulcet. Okay? Okay. Yeah. Right. Uh-huh. Sure. 091313 # bunny We meet in a tangle of limbs. The smoke alarm goes off! He blocks my thrust. I bounce back, come at him again, fake, come at him from below. He blocks first with one arm, then another. I am beginning to get the feel for this. But I don't see his foot shoot out and hook my ankle. I go down. With a tremendous whoop! he is on top of me, his massive chest bearing down on me like a treasure chest. My tingling hand, pinned above my rushing head, drops its useless knife on the night table, next to the bible. My ridiculous erection couldn't possibly be a secret, so I don't even try. 010001 # eel I hugged her real hard, she said, Oh! That feels good. I said wait a minute, and got a better grip and hugged her so hard her back cracked. She said Wow! Thank you! Also I met this great guy-- At which point her boyfriend came up, introduced himself, and politely cut in. He was like twelve feet tall. He offered his hand and I shook it, but he was so huge I could only grasp like two of his fingers in my hand. He was covered in colorful tattoos and had a rough but friendly face. He said of me, Oh, eager and generous! How nice! as he swept her away, still ranting about how cool I was. 090811 # martian - We remember old love in big pixels. Ze gave me a card that he found tucked in The Angel of History, next to the Ace of Spades. I enjoyed, remembered, yearned a little: but not with much precision. - Janasia was nice and polite today, even though yesterday we had a conflict of wills. I thank my own experience and Ms. Reed's intervention. - I am buoyed by glimpses of the great power of my greatest weapon: deciding to do a good job. It's not even that hard. You just have to let yourself put some of your thought energy into it. You have to have faith that you can still be yourself. 102913 # snail # bnabe Your brain's a constant billiards game, complete with geometry, invisible lines made visible, camaraderie, smoke, the click-clack-click... clack... click..., occasionally the thump, several times a night the rumble and roar, the bravado, the rack, the perfection of the triangular arrangement, how particles can be made to behave as a single organism, and then BLAMMO! ... I mean, because around half the time *it was your own arm that cocked back and let her rip,* it was you that did it, and still it makes you start, makes you jump, makes you giggle inside like a girl. 081413 # worm But he has to have an inkling that very same weekend, doesn't he? Some tiny, inner inkling; something in the degree to which he wasn't astonished, wasn't afraid, wasn't what? transported? He's walking in the weeds behind the old hotel. This is the town where a famous writer was born in obscurity. This town was the first settlement on the river that leads into Npydyuan. It's the perfect distance away from the city for a weekend retreat. It's fine; the ghosts aren't here. But where are the violins? He tells himself the violins are a pretty myth. You shouldn't be a slave to your fantasies. 010614 # bushmill The two men in the parking lot continued to struggle. They circled around for a little while. A semi truck pulled in over by the diesel pumps on the other side of the lot, and just sat there grumbling, the way they do, adding a halogen blue to the rusty glow. I was only a little high, just buzzed enough to really sit back and enjoy the show. Mel's thigh was pressing against mine in the front seat of the truck, and that was making my whole lower body warm and hypnotized. Red lights swam one way and white lights the other in the picture-in-picture of the rear view mirror. 091313 # worm I can still remember wailing around in the creek below the pilot house, playing imaginary trumpet and sax, though. I can remember that. I can remember how the limestone felt beneath my feet, and how the water, not too trashy back then, sluiced in and among the slabs and invited you to hop, step, carom from island to island. I remember dry roasted peanuts and IBC root beer. I remember the Wurlitzer, singing, put another dime in the jukebox baby, although of course it was a quarter then, not a dime. I remember, angel is a centerfold. Na, na, na-na na na, na na na na-na na na naaa… 122503 # eel The grass was lumpy and soft, cold spring grass. Some boys started fighting and tormenting a rabbit. The priest got angry but kept his cool. He said, What about the Four Boys from Caldecott? What about adventure, camaraderie, pirates, etc? and they settled down, a little chastened. I looked at one of the boys, maybe a 6- or 7-yr-old, and his face was still a little twisted with the drama of it all, and I could see how easy it would have been to just get mad back at him, instead of offering an alternative as the priest had done, and I made some kind of mental note. 083013 # treefrog 042710. I am green and loaming. I am in a strange trench. I am in the prime of my middle age, but I am not doing so well, mister Whitman. However, i am not hopeless. I feel alive. And sort of dead. But mostly alive. The asphalt under my feet glows nude and hot. The strange, hot children in this hades I diurnally inhabit give off symbols, cants, and messages from another era: now. Because this is a war, they are real people, unlike any i have ever created before. The stakes are high as Life, and i couldn't care less on purpose. But where one goes on accident-- 000001 # human Maybe a crow. Like one of the seven that were eating the bread scraps in front of the house this morning. In the snow. The wretched, crusty snow. Tire-gray and listlessly worried by the sun, the shot snow sits as pathetically self-referent as I. We both hide railroad tracks. We both melt a little when salted. We both we both we both fell from the sky and are never going back . . . . Or are we? In another form, on another day, in another recombination, when we are evaporated and we go to join the rest of the pollution up there. It's ten seventeen. Time for a nap or more coffee? 081413 # worm Gravity spins the willow-haired girl closer to Me. Him observes archly. Bnabe gets drunker than anyone. The bonfire chain smokes. Feet are bare, close to the flames. The willow-haired girl bares her breasts, close to Me. Something just snaps--Bnabe has wanted her for months. The flames leer pornographically. The flames put on a green dress, go out in public, flaunt their wickedness. Me knows he's betraying his old friend, but he does not stop. The willow-haired girl is not a territory. Is she? She is singling Me out, isn't she? Who is Me to resist her insouciant nearness? Bnabe drinks. 081413 # worm Him and Me are eating candy on Me's trampoline. They're out of veed and horehound. All that's left are the crappy sour chews. Empty wrappers make fluttery pyramids to rival the mountains of Him and Me's bloated stomachs. Where's Dekna? Dekna got sick of Him's face, so she dumped him. Serves Him right, for all those little brace-faced girls whose hearts he broke when he was barely old enough to make a fist without looking cute. Me misses Dekna's presence, of course, but in legend she's almost more powerful than when she was, in the flesh, part ally and part competition. 081313 # copperhead The blue-green beetle is gone. I didn't notice when it flew or walked away. There's so much that goes unnoticed. Maybe that's a good thing. My left ass cheek is a little bit sore. Here, let me adjust my weight to get some relief, *and the entire watercraft adjusts it's weight along with me.* Fucking canoes. The sound of the water-polished stones against the bottom of the boat are like sunspots in my little slack-jawed universe. Yeah there's definitely more sludgy water in the bottom than there was before. It was like two sandal-widths away from my foot before, and now 081413 # worm The dog is transformed, too. You've seen him if you've traveled down a country road at dusk. You've heard his plaintive howl, a farm or two away. He became the picture of Npydyuan: ancient, noble, by default pathetic--the old dog sitting on the dilapidated porch in the shadow of civilization's inevitable decline. He remains brave and kind. He howls against approaching pickup trucks, strange-smelling men, rabid industrialization, nuclear warheads, pollution, cancer, and jealous boyfriends' petty spite. He will protect the willow-haired girl until time and he break down, and even after. 081313 # copperhead Only a few meager trickles and runnels flow between me and what could properly be described as the river bank; the main channel is behind me. The sun is low, low, low to my left. To my right, towards the sudden bend in the river bed, I notice now a great, gnarled tree trunk, parallel to the gurgling surface of the water. It's one of those perfect sitting-by-the-river spots, the kind of rotund, firm barky surface that practically begs you to climb aboard, that makes you feel like a little girl with a horse between her legs, simultaneously adventurous and safe and sound. 091313 # trout Sand and the papery sycamore leaves. Daily cycles: the tide. The girls. The emotions. The sun baking the emotions into the faces of the girls. The bleaching of the driftwood houses. I love my life. I live here, and I can fly. I am not kidding. I am a dream god. You become me when you dream, and you leave me with a smile on your face. But I stay here. I live here. I help the girls with their homework. And when the time comes, I go into the town with the men, and we raid the town. We're pirates. We're the badguys. And you love us. And we love you. It's a good arrangement. 120413 # human # fox You've got to serve a need first, and then you can be an artist. This self-serving, wish-fulfillment thing about art being a need is a particularly twisted form of bullshit. Yes, it's a need in a way, but it is born out of serving other, tangible, physical needs. I'm not going to go to the appliance store to ask about a dryer belt, when I can plug in my model number right online. Somewhere, there's a human behind every transaction, and that human has the full potential, and my full support, to be an artist. But I'm not going to make up fake shit to be artsy about. 081613 # worm Did you ever just want to say simple things? Did you ever have a powerful, inarticulate desire to say, simply, I love you. I love you. I'm hungry. I want to go to sleep. I want to sleep for a long time. I want to wake up when I wake up, and then I want to pack away the campsite, and go on to somewhere else. I want to drive for a long time in the orange pickup truck with you, and you, and any of the rest of you all who still want to hang on. Let's go. I love you all. Play some music. Let's sing and pray. Let's get down on our knees tonight and pray to the god of stiff hot cock. 081413 # worm # roach She rises gracefully, turns, and walks back up the winding planks. She walks her own true walk for the first time since she was a small child. She is amazed at how it doesn't hurt. Her back unknots. Her hips widen. Her heart opens. She hugs the weight of her own bosom. Flower, fawn, amaranthine breeze, and sultry step--the beautiful arches of her small, new feet carry her back up the hill and, musing on what's yet to come, back home. Tomorrow she starts her new job at that cafe. An unusual place. Kind of a freak palace, to be sure, but comfortable. She sleeps. 011005 # human He told me other things, too: I need to find a way to reset -- other than by getting caught. I need to develop some default moves, ways to keep flowing when I get into a situation I need to get out of. I'm intuitive, and I react intuitively, but sometimes my intuition needs a solid move to back it up in a sticky spot. I'm always trying so hard to get in there; I need to work on ways to get out of there, and keep flowing. And most ringingly of all: I need to release my long legs, long body -- I need to go ahead and be beautiful and tall, and let it all fly free. 081413 # worm He's been on expeditions to small, independent planets before. Usually it takes forever to bring the current society up to a decent enough tech-level that they can even begin to provide what parts you're looking for, and then there's the matter of convincing them to do it for you without scaring them all into some kind of war twitch that always ends in a mess. Unless you can just sneak around and fabricate what you need on your own. Even then, it's usually near impossible to get fried eggs up well, yolks fluid but not runny, the bottoms crisp and not rubbery. That's really the sucky part. 010614 # bushmill Oho no you don't! Her voice gets suddenly deep, her mouth turned down with the pleasure of forcing herself to stop laughing and sound serious. She pushes at his chest with both arms. Her loose black sleeves fall back and I can see her sleek, white muscles straining against him. She grunts, and they roll over together so that she's on top. She grabs both of his wrists. One of them has a chunky gold watch I've never noticed before. It looks almost comically masculine on his wiry, hairy wrist. She leans back with all her weight, and he lets himself be pulled to his feet. 144215 011597 # human # fox # spoonman Notice what you notice, says Ginsberg, but to me that reads: Notice what you think you should write down because you noticed it, although you didn't really feel like writing it down but you thought you should because it seemed somehow impressive and writerly. Yeah, notice that. Maybe then the phone will start to ring, the dollars will start to flow, and the chix will be beggin on their knees again. We're on page twenty-four, and no end in sight. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The space bar chisels softly thru the snow of this 031001 # eel he said, kind of befuddled as if he really didnt know better, "no, i'm not dead; i was just out wandering around . . . " then as we were all sort of walking around in circles, i said, "dude i don't know, you seem kind of cold. and not just normal walking around outside cold." i looked in his mouth. "see, look at your mouth." it was sort of cottony looking, whitish. "i'm afraid you really may be dead, after all." it was kind of like the feeling of waking from a good dream you had thought real for a moment, only to be faced with how bitterly mundane life inevitably is. 081013 # dog \* So here I am walking down the rut sleepwalking and talking to myself and wishing the squirrels would chat with me and pretending they do until they actually do at which point I stop and realize I'm a little scared of talking squirrels even if they do listen politely while I tell them about how I got myself locked out of the Place of the Way by calling for a vote of confidence. It's my birthday. I have presents for everyone back in my cupboard in the Place. But since I'm out here now, I'll just have to improvise. Know that I am dreaming of your love.\* 000096 # human You ain't fucking fooling noone. I asked myself "do you ever get lonely in a room full of people" and all that shit. Then, walking dexter, a nightly ritual which while it often seems a pain in the ass really saves my fucking life some times, I heard a band playing. Well, first i just looked and listened around the block, and the festival juices were still sluicing, even tho the festival itself was nothing but trash strewn about--bags of rocks, strings and ropes, papers, etcetera (i like this pipe, i do, i only wish it would not go out so easily). 011314 # geoff So you want to figure all this out, eh? You've come in through one of the 12,960 outside doors, or maybe you've rotated through two-thirds or so of a dimension and come in through one of the doors that are normally inaccessible from the outside--who knows. In any case, be aware that no one is going to leave anything but clues. And clues are everywhere, which in a way means they're nowhere. People leave breadcrumbs, and that's about it. Nobody's going to pop up and tell you, okay, this is what it all means. Or if they do, you should probably not trust them. 010514 # stranger Late October's leftover leaves, past the death-defying blaze of tourist brilliance, dull sienna, burnt brick, hovering on the leeward side of a few trees between here and the dirt clods and the stubble of the first few feet of the cornfields. The houses--not particularly interesting. There must be a street in this town where the houses are old, grand, creaking, picturesque, but this street is not that one. Here they are squat, utilitarian, decorated yes here and there by a half-collapsed pumpkin or a clump of some kind of corn that doesn't grow around here. 110613 # squirrel # fox Failing all that, you just hit return, and type a plain boring cliched narrative phrase, keep going anyway. She went up the porch steps, and... It's okay if it's plain contentless filler stuff, because so is the porch when you think about it. So is a cup of coffee. But entire relationships are spawned over cups of boring coffee when someone walked up some steps and went through a boring door. Someone or something had to get them there, create that plain thick china mug for them. They don't have to know it, but that someone is you. 081413 # worm But you'd look sweet! Upon the seat! Of a bicycle built for waaaaaaauuuuuggghhhhhhh! Geprorogo's cyclic efforts have finally amounted to something; the bike relinquishes its stationary status, and it and Geprorogo hurtle with cannonball force toward the opposite wall. Wham! Great chunks of masonry cascade out. The whole room rumbles. The bike is twisted hopelessly; one upside-down wheel spins weakly with bent spokes. Geprorogo lands atop Barp, who grunts. Then they both just sit there. You get the feeling this sort of thing happens a lot with these two. 110809 # treefrog Why don't you take care of yourself? Why do you masturbate? Why do you have belly fat that is poisoning you? Why did you forget your dreams? Why do you still want to smoke? Why do you feel guilty about that? What is tomorrow going to be like? Why do you always procrastinate? What are you going to do for your next career, and hopefully it won't suck as much as this one? Why do you feel a twinge when you say that? How could you focus on the good parts and get rid of some of the bad parts? Or do you just want something that's easy? 224103 010001 # eel I get afraid that if I assert my independence at all, I will lose that. I will get left out of the crazy games. I wont get to trip with you, and I dont mean just the drugs. Is this making any sense? It is hard for me to say all this because I feel like Im being cowardly, that Im being boring, that Im giving in to some kind of mundane programming. But I guess I have to take that risk, because I have to take care of myself, take care of the metaphorical and actual dogs and so forth, and I hope after all this youll still want to play and have adventures with me. 011914 # robot # gull Okay, so the concept of the wormhole exists now. Or "writing yourself a door." I love that. That's the main reason VoodooPad is so cool. Here's what you do: - copy text of key word or phrase on current page - run the "open a bit in VP" script/app - on the new page, make the copied text an alias (so where you came from will link here now, without having to have an ugly time stamp linking to it) A script that would do all that automatically would be nice. 101313 # dolphin Membership in pods is not rigid; interchange is common. 081413 # worm The musicians are seated on an island, in front of a large-ish bamboo hut. Whatever else happens, they don't stop playing. Their harmonies are elegant and ethereal. Omsatigo is pulling himself, paunch and all, out of the ruddy water that laps at the tile beach below the musicians' feet. He is squat, dark, jowly and beefy. He has a bald spot on his head. His chest and much of his back are carpeted with curly black hair. He is completely, agressively naked. He detects your presence, and turns around, dripping, bent slightly to the left, to call out to you. 081613 # worm Cosse. She pulls the laces tighter. It's about time to go to work. She's one of the lucky extremely few: she got a job her second day out of jail. She spent that first night in a bush. It was damp and steamy, and the whole secret city seemed to be inside-out; the bush was the solar system for a change. She slept rather well in there, all things considered, until sometime around dawn when a shifty-eyed litterbug threw a wadded McSchwerman's sack into the bush. The cold, greasy detritus made her think of better times, to be sure, better times than these. 090207 # eel It's the ocean, and a spray of tiny islands. People and children are swimming in the insanely blue waters of the nearest ones. The cerulean currents swirl in and around, and lead our vision from one perfect picture to the next. We sit right on the edge, joke about falling. He gives me half his popsicle. After a while, we climb back down. We have to jump down from the bottom of the ladder at the bottom, because it's not quite long enough. I have to go back and tease him because he just hangs there for a while before letting himself drop on down to the ground. 030002 # eel A chinese man was strapping me to a metal chair in a room with others in similar chairs whom i could sense but not see. there were tv's in front of the room which we were more or less required to watch. the tv had a vaguely asian woman with a round face, young, maybe early twenties, doing something vaguely athletic but with a sense of psychic remove. the man was not doing a very good job of securing my restraints. he strapped loosely to my upper left arm a large boxy contraption, explaining that it encouraged greater loyalty. When he was finished, he walked away. 000002 # human i do whatever you want if you just let yourself. what's taken me longer to get is that what you want doesn't have to be what you see on tv, what your dad wanted, what your dad didn't want, what any of the people in your favorite books wanted- any of that. the tricky part has been allowing myself to want what i want. i want to type & be a weaver & a bard. i want to love a man. i want to be a bitch & a cuckold & feel the pure, hi, clean rush of that perversion. i want to teach my kids about spaceships & standing up for yourself. i want all that. 081413 # worm The boathouse is right where it's supposed to be. It looks even mossier now, even more slumped into the soggy river bank. Krim and Ltiky stand there at its mouth, the whispering black water behind them, the wild slope above and before them occluding the city. Halfway up the hill, the house to which this humble little structure once belonged looks abandoned now as well. People used to live there; when Krim and Ltiky used to come here, they would often see lights on in its windows. But even then, it had been forever since the boathouse had been functional. 081313 # copperhead But whatever. The bridge lurks behind my head. I know it's there, and if the sun goes down any further (if? I mean, if? Really?), there will be a shadow falling across my currently sun-kissed shoulders. I might even have to put my shirt back on. Ever notice how you can sometimes get a glimpse of the most horrendous depths of the nearness of outer space, the utterly freezing emptiness and absolute death that night is a tiny emblem of, hours before night even falls? That happens to me more often lately, for some reason. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. 081013 # dog *Now, this is the fork. Here, at this moment, re-enacted so often by so many men, the road can go any direction (as in fact it can at any moment, thanks to the legacy of the glow-worms who made the universe, but we can come back to them later). One possibility is that they go back to sleep, dream other dreams, and later ME will find a woman, a fierce one perhaps, or a frightened, soft one; it doesn't matter so long as she be selfish and giving enough to play the substitute, to act out with him the rest of that scene, as if it had taken a different direction, thus:* 081013 # dog *ME rolls HIM a smoke, proffers it. HIM, not knowing what else to do quite yet, smokes. Each individually listens to the clatter of six-, seven-, and other-sided dice as the unicorns get rowdy two tables away. Who can compare what HIM hears to what ME hears? The sounds are the same, right, tho they swim into different ears, different heads, are clouded into chaos by different perceptions of time and nature, by the turbulent signatures of discrete, individual points of consciousness? I think there's a class on that you can go to. Check the bulletin board.* 110113 # human # poetgame Going pretty heavily into faith-debt, here. Not enough for rent right now, must sell van and camera, "we're poor" is it worth it? What kind of choices have I made? Are my sacrifices aimed true? Cuz at the hearing I remember myself saying something like "I never sacrificed anything for my writing." Not the exact words, but close enough. Then what AM I sacrificing for? Cuz typing this at 2:28 with a fever of 102º and a balance of $134, it sure feels like somebody must have let *SOMETHING* go. 081413 # worm Eventually, I surrendered. 051706 # squirrel We walked in mud troughs, played drums Loud, until a friendly sheriff came along, out of the blue nowhere and said, boys, you're making too much noise; these are farmers out here, ordinary people who have to get up early, so can you please just knock it off, and we were glad to. Relieved to have been chastised into silence, we got back in our car, emblematic of the luxury of extended youth that is (or was) America, and drove on back to somewhere resembling home, My dead drunk friend and I. 081413 # worm In another room, a room festooned with rugs the color and shadiness of a swamp, a telephone sits, primly, on a walnut whatnot, and rings. It's someone calling who wants you to compromise. The sound waves billow out into the next room, and the next room, where the peonies grow. There are always ants in that room. It smells like your grandmother's healing cottage. Gravity works differently in there. Fences are shorter, days are more vast. The air is always pinging. Shooting stars have yet to be born. You are--say it: free. The curtains swing in the breeze. 120104 # human # roach I'm in this cafe because I'm executing time before going to the ritual gang-bang hootenany, and do you know what I really want? I really want that scrippy blond guy at that table over there -- no, that one, over there -- to be sketching a picture of me. I want him to show the ambivalently feminine way I hold my cigarette. I want him to catch glances every now and then when I'm looking away philosophically. I want to remain totally oblivious of his casually reverent gaze. I want the picture of my face to have all the right lines in it. 112113 # spoonman Slender, smooth, fair, good teeth, nice smile, soft long hair, a gentle intelligence effuses. His girlfriend's a little calm and dignified for her age, attractive with nerd glasses and hooded sweatshirt. Across a pair of student desks they talk, sip, smile--later, at her apartment, a steaming bath awaits, the forced-water heat register burbles and destroys any trace of the winter outside; the windows' frost breaks up the star-colored mercury light from the street below. They are going to fuck and fuck and fuck, and the world right now is a friendly place. 111812 # human # crow # bunny Ah, that's okay. Let's recall the visceral. Hey, I'm a damned artist, right? I can do that--*it's all right if it feels good,* right sis? Let's recall how illuminating and expansive and how the words just slipped out like a young man's firm turd: I'm a writer. I'm an artist; I'm a writer. I have to do it or else get sick. It was the twin of the other verbal tower from a few weeks before: I've always known I'm gay. Bam. There it was. It just came out, uncoerced, unconsidered, just as real as a june bug falling out of the couch cushion. 102913 # snail # featherwoman She had come out to the sun to see what we were talking about and to get some of our pistachios, and I rolled around on the ground with her and did that thing where I pretend to fall asleep on her and then wake up with an exaggerated start when she makes the slightest sound or movement, and she giggles and we do it all over again until we do something else like swing her around in a flying circle. You guys are silly, you said as you walked back toward the house, and it sounded like it meant, I can tell I'm not included in this. My rules: 1) be on time 2) don't do anything stupid 3) don't fucking lie about when you say you're going to be someplace at a certain time, and then you're just totally off fucking off at the goddamn grocery store for fuck's sake, I mean what the fuck is the actual reason for going to the grocery store at this particular time anyway? I mean, couldn't it have waited? Oh wait. I bet I know why he just *had to go to the grocery store right exactly now.* But It's so fucking tedious, I'll spare me the gory details and just pretend not to think about that right now. 000000 # treefrog I am failing anyone who feels unsafe, totally bored, nervous, miserable, etc. My class shouldn't be that way. It's my job not to let the asshole kids scare away the relatively innocent. That fucking sucks, dude. I think Rebecca thinks I'm just a complete joke. I never followed up with her on that red slips of paper thing with Brandon. I mean, I personally thought it was kind of dumb and demeaning, but the point is, I'm not engaged. I don't go out of my way to interact with her about him, and so why should she take me seriously. I feel I'm being tolerated. 000096 # squirrel and it was because i knew at some level even though the efect of the drug was such that it didnt consciously occuyr to me till myuch later, i knew that it was going to wwear off and that i was going to miss it, not that it was going to wear off and i was going to say oh how stupid i was i was just on a drug and wasnt that fun, but that when it wore off, i was actually, physically, emoptionally, spiritually going to feel this hurt,m this empitness thais oh shit, fuck it isnt like that forever, and even though i rationally knew it at the outset 000001 # human So how do you like that. 30 years old and STILL I rush out to buy something on credit because it's going to make me content enough to get over that threshhold of lo-tech dullness into a life of confidence and adventure, and then it fails to do so after the pornographic waves wash over me and the purchase is done, the product set up and fucked with, and now I just wish it would leave, get out of my house and not call me back either, and take your goddamn smelly clothes and piles of horseshit in the bathroom with you thank you very much god i suck. 081613 # worm Books! Books are everywhere. It's a bookstore, after all. Now her fingertips go pad-pad-pad along the spines of volume after volume, tracing a path in the dust. No-one ever reads these books, really. The few customers the shop has are generally only here to see her—remarkable, considering this is only her second day employed here, and her first day, yesterday, was only a half day because she didn't get hired until noon. You wonder, in a city like this, how shops like this can exist. And then you drive on, in search of your next hot dog, and forget all about it. 091313 # trout He jumped down off the counter, amazingly lithe for one so bulky. He said something in some language, something that killed me because it was only meant for her ear, her delicate, perfect, gold-garlanded ear. I had given her those earrings. And now that monster was talking his sawdust-colored words right past them and into her vulnerable, innocent aural cavities. Then he just walked out, whaled on the front door like to bust the little dangling bells right off. And she followed like a leaf aswirl in the invisible wake of a fuming city bus. 082313 # human Girls (except Celi who hadda goda bed already cuz she wouldn't clean up her toys) sleeping in tent in back by the commons, without the fly on so they can stare up through the mesh at the stars & planes & planets and moon (tho it hasn't come up yet) and we just saw the ISS go by. Looked it up, and it said it should appear out of the west at 8:47, checked the clock and it was 8:48; two minutes later it disappeared SSE. So yeah, Alexander Misurkin, Pavel Vinogradov, Chris Cassidy, Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg, and Luca Parmitano--hello from Muskego. 081413 # copperhead Every elsewhere that exists is filled with happening; people are dying, elated, insane, miserable, scheming; deals are being made; prisoners tortured; communication is breaking down. The news is being bellowed across every medium; most of it goes unheard. Money is being made. Breakthroughs are occuring. Bitter failures are unfolding. Entropy is increasing, but nevertheless, right here, as so often happens between him and me, and it occurs to me for probably about the fourth or fifth time today that this is why I'm here right now, nothing happens. 000096 # squirrel isn't it obvious what more i want? isn't what obvious i can't hear you with that pipe in your mouth i mean, it's obvious that being employed attractive etc etc is not enough. enough for what enough to feel free. no not even free. i don't know what the word is it is ungraspable. how bout this. abe liclon once said people are just about as happy as they make their minds up to be, okay, very nice sentiment. but, how how to make up your mind. yes. i don't know you just do. honestly now, \
no honestly now, you just do 030696 # squirrel Jackie and I have formed a writer's group called Oddletters. Total # of people is four, we've met twice so far and it's really incredibly fun and tingly. To go to a coffee house, a warm, gently orange-lit place and be near people, scribbling and talking and not caring about anything else right then and there for a little while. I am proud of having done this. They all look to me for leadership, and this makes me feel more human, too. 081313 # copperhead Green water just keeps rushing back the way we've come. Aluminum glares beneath our asses. 070612 # human The bigs are thoroughly enmeshed in the transformation into permanent humanity. Their firmware update process has been initiated. It's good, sad, exciting--what it's supposed to be, not without surprises of course. I don't mean to undervalue it. But the littles are still powerful aliens. Looking directly at them, locking unabashed gazes with them, remains a transcendent opportunity, a glimpse at the terrifying nakedness of the truth and beauty that existed before your stilted and dumbfounded authors ever started capitalizing on Truth and Beauty. 041594 # eel I decided I was ready, and found you over by the produce and milk, where they had tables set up just like a library. You were studying or something, and you were sitting there not wearing anything but a thong bikini, the bottom half. As I walked up, somehow you became standing on your chair, and I reached up and touched your face and said, "You hardly have anything on," and then I hugged you, with my face just above your belly, 'cause you were on the chair. It was nice, warm, smooth. You said you would be "more polite" in public, if only it weren't so hot. 081413 # copperhead Ordinarily in the morning I make a rough log cabin out of kindling around the scraps of paper he's thrown in a makeshift fire ring. I light the fire because I'm the one who can find the lighter. He starts getting food items out and sometimes cooking, and in the process scatters all kinds of packages, cans, containers, and miscellaneous items all over the ground around our campsite. Yesterday it was oranges rolling all over the creek bottom pasture we've camped on: he doesn't even seem to notice these kinds of things—until he decides he'd like an orange. 081413 # worm And there, in the middle of the ruins, sits the troglodytic Barp--abject, hunched over, sobbing unrestrainedly. Ltiky dives into the fire, before he is ready. You always go before you're ready. She's waiting there for him, of course, at the table in the back of the old caboose. She's smoking. God damn it, she's smoking. His face turns red at the prospect of scolding her. He sits down. The tracks clickclack in his ass crack. The scenery washes by oustside, saturated green. One bare light bulb swings in time with the proverbial hobo's lullabye. 000003 # human But you look on, you delve in, you get down in the mud. And you discover things, about yourself, yes, but more importantly, perhaps, about your dad. Your mom. Your dog and your wife and your lover's lover, the one you never had. You learn things about space travel, aliens, elves, how it is to wake up warm in a cold house. You learn how not to tie your shoes. You learn about a spider in a box. Are you getting my drift? It only comes on when it really, really wants to. You have to try to convince it to turn itself on. How you go about this is anyone's guess. 081413 # worm Me lives, of course, at home. Him lives in an abandoned cinder-block office building on the skyward side of downtown. Me rides his bike to Him's place. Me's bike is purple. It has a banana seat and girlish handlebars. One gear. Coaster brakes. Tassles on the bar ends. Me's nipples crinkle mirthfully on the way down the big hill. Past the ruins of the battleship, past the giraffe gang theatre. Past the maple-leafed entrance to the labyrinth, past old Walke's emporium. The sun has disappeared under the river that ends the city. Me is now downtown. Fuck Me! 132130 012114 # storyteller *The problem with our whole economy,* he says loudly, causing the students in the front few rows (the only students who are paying attention) to start awake and then roll their eyes like *here we go again,* *is that the whole engine that drives the thing is based on our massive, lame-brained addiction to chasing every last ounce of stillness and quiet out of our collective, comically politicized minds!* When was the last time (he continues more calmly now) you bought a product that didn't have something to with some kind of inessential hunger? 110008 # human So after all these years of looking for little rectangles because I thought I needed to find the index cards, I found them right here. Thank you, gods of November. I found out that I was not looking for a system to replace them. I was not looking for a machine, a truc, a way of being, or any of that stuff. No wait. Maybe I was looking for a way of being. A way of being alone occasionally. And this is it. This has pretty much always been it.