Scrytch writing from 1998-2001: III
Will & Wonderment
Golden Paths
All over Mars the terraforming crews cautiously tinker with new rhythms. Ravens and barrowrats, podrats and b-kats and mites, j-dogs and a hundred kinds of gaussian and non-gaussian humans. In only a few centuries no colonist can fully claim to have *adapted*; that's generational work.
Several among the postterrestrial daughter species hibernate each winter, sharing dreams along their webworked nervous systems. Their deep slow sleep, filled with shared locations and artefacts held in common, spreads across the months of cold like landscape. Congenetics of the Martian colonists, estranged in small bands and barrios across the solar system occasionally dip, too, into the homelanders' vision.
Each spring, the barrowrats emerge from their tunnels in the artic zone to attend to their waking affairs. They monitor the solar collectors and windtraps, play in the glacial revines, every spring a different landscape. While the barrowrats work above ground, migratory podrats extend the tunnel system. Both clades mingle after sunset in chambers at the interface between tunnels and surface ramparts.
J-dogs don't hibernate, but of course like all Martians can enter a protective trance by volitional hormone release, dropping oxygen consumption and body temperature to survive a night outside. What songs their indirect ancestors held over plains and valleys, j-dogs now howl planet wide across their equatorial range and into orbital habitats, a hundred thousand voices raised to union.
A Rainbow Behind the Lips
It took four months for my mouth to heal, almost a year before i could use my new tongue for everything the old one had been capable of. While i waited there was much to distract me from the pain, the silence and the entirely new approach to food. Lessons in dance and stillness with the Sisters Aeikinatai, observing those of the rites as i was permitted, training in and without weapons under the Sisters Eupsilikai, and much menial labor. Goats to milk, wool to spin, pilgrims to bless on the holy days (which duty seemed to me little different from caring for goats), and shifts in the kitchen and workshops.
As a novice, my primary exercise was that of self-restraint: i was a Glossariodas in physique alone, and trying the gifts of a full sister too soon is unpredictable. Some Sisters have early facility with their tongues, and understand its mysteries well before their second year. Once it has surely grown one with our own flesh, we may practice the hand, the serpent-lash, the arrow and other lower forms. I was not so blessed in that year, and wept at night for fear i could never speak again.
Sisters Arma and Baruthamba taught me truely to praise the Damiourgos for the blessing of time. Baruthamba, two grades above me and several years older, was a bit mad, given to visions and ecstasies. The lower forms came easily to her and while she slept we often heard her sing in the outer voice. In these iron days we seldom hear the outer voice even among the great Magai and Iriomateres, and indeed it has always been a rare blessing; in one so young, it was terrifying. For her own safety and ours as well, Baruthamba was put under the supervision of Maga Bronta the song-mistress. Long ill, Maga Bronta died of the waking-sickness within the year, but in that time Baruthamba built much art upon her talents. At the funeral she was suffered to intertwine a strand of her tutor's tongue into her own.
Poor Sister Arma of my own grade had no such fortune. Her acceptance into the Sisters Glossariodai had more to do with the wealth of her family than any spiritual gifts. Her mouth bled for months; "tongues of light do not lie," indeed! She lost use of her eyes. Her jaw flopped, the tongue often lolled out and shivered, and her head twisted horribly to the right. Rarely able to eat, Arma wasted away. We all pitied her and prayed, Baruthamba most of any of the novices.
Perhaps Baruthamba was a fool and prideful to try healing one so unsuitable for the Order as Arma, but with the permission of the Iriomateres she sang a hymn in the outer voice. I was there among those Sisters summoned to watch and pray. For half a night Arma knelt before Baruthamba, and for half a night Baruthamba intoned the voice of the Damiourgos through the starry gift of His Arkhons. When the sky grew rosy, Baruthamba bowed and embraced Arma, and Arma was able to untwist her neck, close her bruised mouth and open her eyes. They sat in silence for a moment, and how we praised the Damiourgos for His mercy!
As the first ray of the sun struck Arma's face, she opened again her mouth and uncoiled her tongue with control as she had never before possessed. Truly we were amazed! Those of the Sisters able to speak cried out in wonder and thanks. Shuddering, Arma then seized Baruthamba by the shoulders and drove the gleaming gift of the Stars deep into Baruthamba's left eye. The tip piereced through and out the back of her skull, then separated into its seven fibers and curved around the head and back into Arma's mouth. Both of them screamed, but Baruthamba's voice failed in a burst when the fibers constricted, crushing her skull.
It happened too quickly for anyone to act. Baruthamba lay dead, her blood pumping onto Arma, whose tongue strands now thrashed about as her wide eyes rolled. Baruthamba's tongue emerged from the shattered head and separated into its own eight fibers, which writhed for a moment before wrapping themselves into their waiting brothers. Arma screamed until well after her tongue ripped itself out of her throat to sway in the air above Baruthamba's neck, now a single limb pointing toward the heavens.
Arma's body was burned and her ashes taken to the sea. Baruthamba's body was placed in the Order's cemetary and an apple tree was planted over it. What was done with the tongues is a mystery i am not permitted to write.
Pharos
The Pharos could be seen halfway to Kupros: a mechanical star, a fire focused through the largest lenses ever cast. Sailors whispered that its beam could be directed down in a ship-smashing spear should invaders ever threaten Alexandreia's harbor. I saw no ships broken by the Pharos, only men: philosophers, castrated holy men, a hundred kinds of charlatan fluttered to the halls rooted at the base of the tower. Every text in every language of the civilized world was to be found there, or so it was said, and every kind of nonsense could be heard in the agora, old lies in new robes, new lies dancing naked, myriad whispers of secret techniques, jealous muttering after quick power.
The scholars of the Pharos produced mostly lists --the five greatest tragedies, biographies of the seven mightiest kings, collections the 10 noblest poets-- and these too found their places in the library. Every Ptolemaios lavished funds on the library, seeking to increase its holdings beyond those hoarded by his ancestors (but every Ptolemaios, too, had the shelves culled of materials he found offensive). Diadochs in Pergamon and Seleukeia, then republican nobles in Roma and Qrthdsht purchased copies to gild their cities.
Thieves had at the collection; rats made their nests in the works of the unread poets and playwrights; smaller, less public libraries appeared in the homes and lodges of the alchemists, contemplatives and yet stranger cultists come north and west. It was in the lodge of the Sidereokheiridon Adelphoi that plans for a certain mirror came under my gaze, and it was in a house of an older Brother that i began its construction.
Nutter
The plan was simple. Take the C train to the Village, visit my angelic-extraterrestrial brother, cry on his shoulder, pet his velvet douvet. He didn't want coffee or doughnuts ("What are you trying to do to me, Schwein?"), so i took a lego robot to observe his apartment. Got in, instantly regretted my hat, took it off & closed my eyes for some high bandwidth DCC chat. What's this noise from behind me though? A woman is crying. Can't make out what she's saying. Man's voice, equally low, aggressive, annoyed. Some kind of tense discussion. What's wrong? Subway protocol & their proximity --inches away-- forbids me from turning around & looking. Has he kidnapped her? Is she sick? In withdrawal? Massive distress vibes; he's trying to comfort her (only words i can make out: "This'll be over soon") & just scaring her more, pushing her around, i hear fabric sliding on the plastic seats. Oh God, what should i do? Should i say something? Call the police? Just pray? That's a start. What's going on? Reached my stop, got to peek at them before i got off, nearly fell over. One man, one bent-backed homeless man pressing his face & left hand against the plexiglass. Thick taped glasses, condensation on the window, a smile like a dying child.
Milk & Honey All the Way Down (a tafsir of Ayat al-Kursi)
What do you need your body doesn't produce? Does forgetfulness or sleep overtake you? Does your awareness stick on an object or two at a time? You only know what you've met, & that but slightly. What do you know of causes or effects when you just taste the slices you've chanced across? A great throne encompasses many realms & worlds, of which you cannot sustain even one mite by your own power.
Give me a gift entirely of your self. Make me something out of nothing you've received. Fill my lungs with breath, open my heart, fill my house with light. C'mon, try it!
You'd Never Guess
"Uh. Hello."
"Hi. You're asleep."
"No, i'm not. Not anymore, anyway."
"No, you're really still asleep. I'll try again some other night."
"No, i'll try to wake up. Your voice should do it."
"Why should my voice make you do anything you haven't already?"
"Because i have in the past, & it has in the past, & the remembering the past can send runners into the present. Though then you have to wonder if you're really in the present or just clinging to a vine hanging out of the past, to shift vegetable metaphors in mid thought."
"Hearing you laugh makes me want to see how you laugh. I don't think either of us were laughing much that one time we met. I want to know if you put your hand in front of your mouth --though i doubt you do, since it sounds so clear-- or some other hand gesture, like slapping your leg."
"You might learn soon enough. You might not be surprised, although you're not talking about wanting to be surprised."
"Surprise me."
"Okay. Writing this down, you're going to spend half an hour looking through books for something digressive or funny or all wise-sounding & sufic for me to say here. You won't find anything that's anything like anyhing i might say, & you'll wonder why it occured to you to try that kind of approach, and to wonder how well you understand us or me or you or you & me when we talk."
"Wow, gold star. I am surprised. Why would i write this down?"
"You tell me."
"Because sometimes i feel like all we have is words, distance, inference & a kind of desire to head the words off at the pass, to talk through them before we forget what each other looks like, before we remember there was never anything else."
"Really?"
"No, not really. There was always an 'else', otherwise the all the words wouldn't have stuck, there'd be nothing to stick to. It's just easy to get frustrated and blame a medium."
"I'll hold off on blaming for a while. Can you?"
"Sure, given the alternatives."
"Porridge! and boll-weevils!"
"Exactly. Now go back to bed. Good night, love."
"Good night; love!"
Perfectly Clear at the Time
"And was it ever that easy? I mean, you couldn't have known."
"Well no, of course not, nobody told me there was actually danger in it. You wait so long, hoping, knowing it'll never happen, hating any damn bump your fingers find over smooth skin--"
"What?"
"It stands out. Isolated points, not really relevant to the surface as a whole but hey, zits are made for pinching, right?"
"Oh sure. Zit-poppers quibble about spelling, too."
"Right, especially if they don't have the moral or intellectual flops to seriously argue. But damned if they won't splatter the mirror with what they got."
"So anyway, when you finally don't have to worry about it?"
"When you lose the fear, you lose your knives, and you forget about the roaming dogs. Or, in my case, nobody told me there were roaming dogs, and i didn't think to look."
"Hmm, i'm afraid that is a failure on your part. You can't hold an unnamed 'other' responsible."
"Now you're being inconsistent. You acknowledged i couldn't have known."
"No, you misunderstood me. You couldn't have known exactly what or who was waiting in the space of possible encounters, but as a spice-gobbler with serious mentattitude--"
"Haw!"
"You see?"
"And you know better than to give me open-ended questions. Run it through the [do]-transformation, add a tense marker, throw some referrance in there, bay-bee."
"Oh please, who's dogging Rome now? Come on, our paddle-boat's ready."
Contrast
You have light? Okay. Hey, what is that? That's cool, I'm into religion myself. Well, not so much religion but what is behind it. No, 'meat' is too crude word for me. I am interested in, how you call it, energy fields, I know hypnosis and chi. It is with and of same pattern as parts of body, brain, muscle, also like compass. People, they talk about finding God. Here, look at my hand. You see this? Firecracker made those marks. Peng! That moment I realized I am made of meat, no different than chicken you fry, no? That explosion it made me musician.
I ask my physics teacher, of course she is complete materialist, I put a compass on her desk and ask which way is north. She said, "It is the red one, of course!" and she thought I was very stupid. But I say to her, "Why is everyone else pointing *that* way?" You know?
Hey, just one minute please.
Okay. You see, I just paid that guy back. I owed him money for long time, and believe me it sucks to be in debt. I am owed so much money I will never see. Six months I worked at moving company, bumm, nothing. I am not paid by that fucking shit bastard. But you know, I will damage him. I know how. His college papers are fakes! Never finished college. Now he thinks he gets smart, goes to business school. He is idiot, just because you have fucking five thousand dollar suit they will not let you in business school. But if luckily he gets in, I will wait two years, let him spend twenty thousand, and then I will let them know he is fake! And at least I can blackmail him, you know? Best served cold, that's right!
Re: usedtobe
Take a deep breath. Tell me every story you know. Tell me what you thought you wanted before easy habits of thought took over. Tell me where you hid the peanut-butter-&-vassopressin cookies. Tell me why you spent all that time doodling band names on your middle school binders. Tell me about the fourth heaven where Hadrati Issa waits to return to the world in glory. Tell me not to be scared.
Oh them kids
Behind Lexington Christian Elementary was a dusty playground, grass torn bare with running kicking feet. Up a little rise grew a spruce with thick scratchy bark bleeding fat drops of sap. I'd sit and play with action figures under the shade of the spruce, and pry off sap with twigs -hold it up to the light, smell it, taste it, heh, stick it in other kids' hair. Usually the drops ended up smeared across Princess Leia's face or binding Cobra Commander's hands behind his back -sap become alien snot, bioarmor, the effects of poison gas. Later I'd wipe at her face, at his hands, but it always stuck in the plastic's pits and creases. Dirt, bits of dust and hair stuck to the traces.
Second grade became third; my toys grew more black fuzz as I kept up the games of wear and confinement. I stopped scrubbing and just wiped off the biggest clots when recess was over, keeping up the alien attacks. Four or five figures grew their coats so thick that what colored spots of plastic still sharped through stood out bright as wildflowers. When I couldn't bend the limbs anymore I burried them to the waist and forearms in the back of the compost pile, where they waited for the dog to find them.
Contrafirmazione
You are not your face. You are not your body. You are not your memories. You are not your operating system of choice. You are not your friends, your ancestors, nor yet your interactions. You are not the product of your environment. You are not your education. You are not an individual. You are not a society. You are not an immortal spirit. You are not breath. You are not a cell. You are not.
"You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done."
Submission
Eternal birther, sustainer, destroyer of all possible worlds
Your names be sung across the sphere of time
Your presence be known
Your love manifest in the Spectacle without as in the realms within
We rejoice in the abundance of your flesh
And your forgiveness for our false consciousness
Your light reveals our paths and dissolves our ignorance
Yours is the law, the will, the wonderment
Now and always
So be it
Elevator repair
"So i was tellin Jen about it and she's like, 'Wow, where'd he get the parts?'"
"Made most of em in the machine room; a few i got out of regular parts catalogs."
"It must have taken months! Years? And you never told nobody about it all this time."
"Well, i been kickin the idea around for a couple years. Just started buildin it in November, so yeah, it's been about a year."
"Huh. You're not worried about it gettin, like, infected or anything?"
"I use a little rubbing alcohol every morning, every night, round the edges, where it rubs up gainst the cut. See how the mountings got all these little indentations? That's so the skull tissue'll grow back in around it & bond. Not takin this thing out, not ever."
"Whoa. And you didn't tell anybody."
"No... if i told anybody, they would have been all 'Hey Rich, when's the cut? Can i come over? Hey Rich, what's it *for*?' Fuck that, man."
"Whoa."
Golden Paths
All over Mars the terraforming crews cautiously tinker with new rhythms. Ravens and barrowrats, podrats and b-kats and mites, j-dogs and a hundred kinds of gaussian and non-gaussian humans. In only a few centuries no colonist can fully claim to have *adapted*; that's generational work.
Several among the postterrestrial daughter species hibernate each winter, sharing dreams along their webworked nervous systems. Their deep slow sleep, filled with shared locations and artefacts held in common, spreads across the months of cold like landscape. Congenetics of the Martian colonists, estranged in small bands and barrios across the solar system occasionally dip, too, into the homelanders' vision.
Each spring, the barrowrats emerge from their tunnels in the artic zone to attend to their waking affairs. They monitor the solar collectors and windtraps, play in the glacial revines, every spring a different landscape. While the barrowrats work above ground, migratory podrats extend the tunnel system. Both clades mingle after sunset in chambers at the interface between tunnels and surface ramparts.
J-dogs don't hibernate, but of course like all Martians can enter a protective trance by volitional hormone release, dropping oxygen consumption and body temperature to survive a night outside. What songs their indirect ancestors held over plains and valleys, j-dogs now howl planet wide across their equatorial range and into orbital habitats, a hundred thousand voices raised to union.
A Rainbow Behind the Lips
It took four months for my mouth to heal, almost a year before i could use my new tongue for everything the old one had been capable of. While i waited there was much to distract me from the pain, the silence and the entirely new approach to food. Lessons in dance and stillness with the Sisters Aeikinatai, observing those of the rites as i was permitted, training in and without weapons under the Sisters Eupsilikai, and much menial labor. Goats to milk, wool to spin, pilgrims to bless on the holy days (which duty seemed to me little different from caring for goats), and shifts in the kitchen and workshops.
As a novice, my primary exercise was that of self-restraint: i was a Glossariodas in physique alone, and trying the gifts of a full sister too soon is unpredictable. Some Sisters have early facility with their tongues, and understand its mysteries well before their second year. Once it has surely grown one with our own flesh, we may practice the hand, the serpent-lash, the arrow and other lower forms. I was not so blessed in that year, and wept at night for fear i could never speak again.
Sisters Arma and Baruthamba taught me truely to praise the Damiourgos for the blessing of time. Baruthamba, two grades above me and several years older, was a bit mad, given to visions and ecstasies. The lower forms came easily to her and while she slept we often heard her sing in the outer voice. In these iron days we seldom hear the outer voice even among the great Magai and Iriomateres, and indeed it has always been a rare blessing; in one so young, it was terrifying. For her own safety and ours as well, Baruthamba was put under the supervision of Maga Bronta the song-mistress. Long ill, Maga Bronta died of the waking-sickness within the year, but in that time Baruthamba built much art upon her talents. At the funeral she was suffered to intertwine a strand of her tutor's tongue into her own.
Poor Sister Arma of my own grade had no such fortune. Her acceptance into the Sisters Glossariodai had more to do with the wealth of her family than any spiritual gifts. Her mouth bled for months; "tongues of light do not lie," indeed! She lost use of her eyes. Her jaw flopped, the tongue often lolled out and shivered, and her head twisted horribly to the right. Rarely able to eat, Arma wasted away. We all pitied her and prayed, Baruthamba most of any of the novices.
Perhaps Baruthamba was a fool and prideful to try healing one so unsuitable for the Order as Arma, but with the permission of the Iriomateres she sang a hymn in the outer voice. I was there among those Sisters summoned to watch and pray. For half a night Arma knelt before Baruthamba, and for half a night Baruthamba intoned the voice of the Damiourgos through the starry gift of His Arkhons. When the sky grew rosy, Baruthamba bowed and embraced Arma, and Arma was able to untwist her neck, close her bruised mouth and open her eyes. They sat in silence for a moment, and how we praised the Damiourgos for His mercy!
As the first ray of the sun struck Arma's face, she opened again her mouth and uncoiled her tongue with control as she had never before possessed. Truly we were amazed! Those of the Sisters able to speak cried out in wonder and thanks. Shuddering, Arma then seized Baruthamba by the shoulders and drove the gleaming gift of the Stars deep into Baruthamba's left eye. The tip piereced through and out the back of her skull, then separated into its seven fibers and curved around the head and back into Arma's mouth. Both of them screamed, but Baruthamba's voice failed in a burst when the fibers constricted, crushing her skull.
It happened too quickly for anyone to act. Baruthamba lay dead, her blood pumping onto Arma, whose tongue strands now thrashed about as her wide eyes rolled. Baruthamba's tongue emerged from the shattered head and separated into its own eight fibers, which writhed for a moment before wrapping themselves into their waiting brothers. Arma screamed until well after her tongue ripped itself out of her throat to sway in the air above Baruthamba's neck, now a single limb pointing toward the heavens.
Arma's body was burned and her ashes taken to the sea. Baruthamba's body was placed in the Order's cemetary and an apple tree was planted over it. What was done with the tongues is a mystery i am not permitted to write.
Pharos
The Pharos could be seen halfway to Kupros: a mechanical star, a fire focused through the largest lenses ever cast. Sailors whispered that its beam could be directed down in a ship-smashing spear should invaders ever threaten Alexandreia's harbor. I saw no ships broken by the Pharos, only men: philosophers, castrated holy men, a hundred kinds of charlatan fluttered to the halls rooted at the base of the tower. Every text in every language of the civilized world was to be found there, or so it was said, and every kind of nonsense could be heard in the agora, old lies in new robes, new lies dancing naked, myriad whispers of secret techniques, jealous muttering after quick power.
The scholars of the Pharos produced mostly lists --the five greatest tragedies, biographies of the seven mightiest kings, collections the 10 noblest poets-- and these too found their places in the library. Every Ptolemaios lavished funds on the library, seeking to increase its holdings beyond those hoarded by his ancestors (but every Ptolemaios, too, had the shelves culled of materials he found offensive). Diadochs in Pergamon and Seleukeia, then republican nobles in Roma and Qrthdsht purchased copies to gild their cities.
Thieves had at the collection; rats made their nests in the works of the unread poets and playwrights; smaller, less public libraries appeared in the homes and lodges of the alchemists, contemplatives and yet stranger cultists come north and west. It was in the lodge of the Sidereokheiridon Adelphoi that plans for a certain mirror came under my gaze, and it was in a house of an older Brother that i began its construction.
Nutter
The plan was simple. Take the C train to the Village, visit my angelic-extraterrestrial brother, cry on his shoulder, pet his velvet douvet. He didn't want coffee or doughnuts ("What are you trying to do to me, Schwein?"), so i took a lego robot to observe his apartment. Got in, instantly regretted my hat, took it off & closed my eyes for some high bandwidth DCC chat. What's this noise from behind me though? A woman is crying. Can't make out what she's saying. Man's voice, equally low, aggressive, annoyed. Some kind of tense discussion. What's wrong? Subway protocol & their proximity --inches away-- forbids me from turning around & looking. Has he kidnapped her? Is she sick? In withdrawal? Massive distress vibes; he's trying to comfort her (only words i can make out: "This'll be over soon") & just scaring her more, pushing her around, i hear fabric sliding on the plastic seats. Oh God, what should i do? Should i say something? Call the police? Just pray? That's a start. What's going on? Reached my stop, got to peek at them before i got off, nearly fell over. One man, one bent-backed homeless man pressing his face & left hand against the plexiglass. Thick taped glasses, condensation on the window, a smile like a dying child.
Milk & Honey All the Way Down (a tafsir of Ayat al-Kursi)
What do you need your body doesn't produce? Does forgetfulness or sleep overtake you? Does your awareness stick on an object or two at a time? You only know what you've met, & that but slightly. What do you know of causes or effects when you just taste the slices you've chanced across? A great throne encompasses many realms & worlds, of which you cannot sustain even one mite by your own power.
Give me a gift entirely of your self. Make me something out of nothing you've received. Fill my lungs with breath, open my heart, fill my house with light. C'mon, try it!
You'd Never Guess
"Uh. Hello."
"Hi. You're asleep."
"No, i'm not. Not anymore, anyway."
"No, you're really still asleep. I'll try again some other night."
"No, i'll try to wake up. Your voice should do it."
"Why should my voice make you do anything you haven't already?"
"Because i have in the past, & it has in the past, & the remembering the past can send runners into the present. Though then you have to wonder if you're really in the present or just clinging to a vine hanging out of the past, to shift vegetable metaphors in mid thought."
"Hearing you laugh makes me want to see how you laugh. I don't think either of us were laughing much that one time we met. I want to know if you put your hand in front of your mouth --though i doubt you do, since it sounds so clear-- or some other hand gesture, like slapping your leg."
"You might learn soon enough. You might not be surprised, although you're not talking about wanting to be surprised."
"Surprise me."
"Okay. Writing this down, you're going to spend half an hour looking through books for something digressive or funny or all wise-sounding & sufic for me to say here. You won't find anything that's anything like anyhing i might say, & you'll wonder why it occured to you to try that kind of approach, and to wonder how well you understand us or me or you or you & me when we talk."
"Wow, gold star. I am surprised. Why would i write this down?"
"You tell me."
"Because sometimes i feel like all we have is words, distance, inference & a kind of desire to head the words off at the pass, to talk through them before we forget what each other looks like, before we remember there was never anything else."
"Really?"
"No, not really. There was always an 'else', otherwise the all the words wouldn't have stuck, there'd be nothing to stick to. It's just easy to get frustrated and blame a medium."
"I'll hold off on blaming for a while. Can you?"
"Sure, given the alternatives."
"Porridge! and boll-weevils!"
"Exactly. Now go back to bed. Good night, love."
"Good night; love!"
Perfectly Clear at the Time
"And was it ever that easy? I mean, you couldn't have known."
"Well no, of course not, nobody told me there was actually danger in it. You wait so long, hoping, knowing it'll never happen, hating any damn bump your fingers find over smooth skin--"
"What?"
"It stands out. Isolated points, not really relevant to the surface as a whole but hey, zits are made for pinching, right?"
"Oh sure. Zit-poppers quibble about spelling, too."
"Right, especially if they don't have the moral or intellectual flops to seriously argue. But damned if they won't splatter the mirror with what they got."
"So anyway, when you finally don't have to worry about it?"
"When you lose the fear, you lose your knives, and you forget about the roaming dogs. Or, in my case, nobody told me there were roaming dogs, and i didn't think to look."
"Hmm, i'm afraid that is a failure on your part. You can't hold an unnamed 'other' responsible."
"Now you're being inconsistent. You acknowledged i couldn't have known."
"No, you misunderstood me. You couldn't have known exactly what or who was waiting in the space of possible encounters, but as a spice-gobbler with serious mentattitude--"
"Haw!"
"You see?"
"And you know better than to give me open-ended questions. Run it through the [do]-transformation, add a tense marker, throw some referrance in there, bay-bee."
"Oh please, who's dogging Rome now? Come on, our paddle-boat's ready."
Contrast
You have light? Okay. Hey, what is that? That's cool, I'm into religion myself. Well, not so much religion but what is behind it. No, 'meat' is too crude word for me. I am interested in, how you call it, energy fields, I know hypnosis and chi. It is with and of same pattern as parts of body, brain, muscle, also like compass. People, they talk about finding God. Here, look at my hand. You see this? Firecracker made those marks. Peng! That moment I realized I am made of meat, no different than chicken you fry, no? That explosion it made me musician.
I ask my physics teacher, of course she is complete materialist, I put a compass on her desk and ask which way is north. She said, "It is the red one, of course!" and she thought I was very stupid. But I say to her, "Why is everyone else pointing *that* way?" You know?
Hey, just one minute please.
Okay. You see, I just paid that guy back. I owed him money for long time, and believe me it sucks to be in debt. I am owed so much money I will never see. Six months I worked at moving company, bumm, nothing. I am not paid by that fucking shit bastard. But you know, I will damage him. I know how. His college papers are fakes! Never finished college. Now he thinks he gets smart, goes to business school. He is idiot, just because you have fucking five thousand dollar suit they will not let you in business school. But if luckily he gets in, I will wait two years, let him spend twenty thousand, and then I will let them know he is fake! And at least I can blackmail him, you know? Best served cold, that's right!
Re: usedtobe
Take a deep breath. Tell me every story you know. Tell me what you thought you wanted before easy habits of thought took over. Tell me where you hid the peanut-butter-&-vassopressin cookies. Tell me why you spent all that time doodling band names on your middle school binders. Tell me about the fourth heaven where Hadrati Issa waits to return to the world in glory. Tell me not to be scared.
Oh them kids
Behind Lexington Christian Elementary was a dusty playground, grass torn bare with running kicking feet. Up a little rise grew a spruce with thick scratchy bark bleeding fat drops of sap. I'd sit and play with action figures under the shade of the spruce, and pry off sap with twigs -hold it up to the light, smell it, taste it, heh, stick it in other kids' hair. Usually the drops ended up smeared across Princess Leia's face or binding Cobra Commander's hands behind his back -sap become alien snot, bioarmor, the effects of poison gas. Later I'd wipe at her face, at his hands, but it always stuck in the plastic's pits and creases. Dirt, bits of dust and hair stuck to the traces.
Second grade became third; my toys grew more black fuzz as I kept up the games of wear and confinement. I stopped scrubbing and just wiped off the biggest clots when recess was over, keeping up the alien attacks. Four or five figures grew their coats so thick that what colored spots of plastic still sharped through stood out bright as wildflowers. When I couldn't bend the limbs anymore I burried them to the waist and forearms in the back of the compost pile, where they waited for the dog to find them.
Contrafirmazione
You are not your face. You are not your body. You are not your memories. You are not your operating system of choice. You are not your friends, your ancestors, nor yet your interactions. You are not the product of your environment. You are not your education. You are not an individual. You are not a society. You are not an immortal spirit. You are not breath. You are not a cell. You are not.
"You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done."
Submission
Eternal birther, sustainer, destroyer of all possible worlds
Your names be sung across the sphere of time
Your presence be known
Your love manifest in the Spectacle without as in the realms within
We rejoice in the abundance of your flesh
And your forgiveness for our false consciousness
Your light reveals our paths and dissolves our ignorance
Yours is the law, the will, the wonderment
Now and always
So be it
Elevator repair
"So i was tellin Jen about it and she's like, 'Wow, where'd he get the parts?'"
"Made most of em in the machine room; a few i got out of regular parts catalogs."
"It must have taken months! Years? And you never told nobody about it all this time."
"Well, i been kickin the idea around for a couple years. Just started buildin it in November, so yeah, it's been about a year."
"Huh. You're not worried about it gettin, like, infected or anything?"
"I use a little rubbing alcohol every morning, every night, round the edges, where it rubs up gainst the cut. See how the mountings got all these little indentations? That's so the skull tissue'll grow back in around it & bond. Not takin this thing out, not ever."
"Whoa. And you didn't tell anybody."
"No... if i told anybody, they would have been all 'Hey Rich, when's the cut? Can i come over? Hey Rich, what's it *for*?' Fuck that, man."
"Whoa."