On What They're Made Of

12/13/2006 7:16 AM – 7:37 AM

And so then you’re awake, then what? You find a statue, preferably of a hunting bird, covered in lead, and then you chase it. And that’s it. Without that, without an idea of what things could be, you can’t move and then the soggy starts to soak in and the flesh rots off the bone and there you are, standing in a swamp more naked than the day you were born.

So what mad soliloquies do you have? Doesn’t matter, long as you have some. You forget and forget even harder, until you’ve forgotten the shape of the mold you were thrown in. What is the inherent thing? Where is the interminable resolve? Whence came the shorter days and why wasn’t I consulted? Forget it, Jake, its Chinatown. So you do. Remembering the gut doesn’t make the world a better place. You learn what you learn in a flash and then move on, gunning for the bad guys, pistol on your hip as you eat. Wake up, it was all a dream, but secret away a piece of the glowing that was inherent to the suitcase.

The cold creeps in through cracks around the window. Be more honest but don’t arrive at absolute ambiguity. There are always rules of thumb. Forget the men with guns and flowers, there’s this little bit of whatever the hell it is we do. Just remember to chase the statute, if you don’t have that, you’ve really got nothing. Someday, it will be alright and it won’t just be arising from forgetting. It grows up from the seeds planted two, three years ago. Now, then. This is just the basket, this is just the work. Three steps forward for every one back, that’s dancing, see. That’s style. The bits of water that cling to the glass catch the light and each disperses it throughout its entirety. One grabs another which grabs another which grabs another and then gravity takes over, pulling a tiny river down behind it. It path remains for a few minutes more and then new circles cover its passage until its existence is questionable. But there the drops are, each describing a moon of orange-yellow and dark blue. Past them is the rest of the world, but you squint to keep it out of focus. The sun is somewhere out there, behind the trees, behind the houses, behind the clouds, behind the globe, and we’re in here, stretching to chase the bird.