1375 days ago today

have you written
any poetry
lately
she asked

well i remember
one i wrote
one thousand
three hundred
seventy-five days

ago today

she asked:

"Are you an artist?"

I f a lt e re d

what i meant to say:

"I'm living."

(I guess this makes this
an artist's commune)

my life as Picasso:

my longing an O'Keefe:

my words Duchamp:

"The word 'art' interests me very much.
If it comes from the Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.'"

thank you
i said
for
asking

memory of Sunday morning nostalgia for Georgia

note: this poem originally appeared one year ago today. depending on his or her needs and proclivities, the reader is encouraged to engage the text horizontally, vertically, or any combination thereof.

(any likeness to Tennessee is strictly coincidental.)

Sunday morning nostalgia for Georgia

feeling:

the ennui of

waking

the Smiths

after

making lattes in

Coca-Cola nightclubs.

mixing:

photo developer

with orange juice

and dreaming of

Floridian abortions

and Chattanooga matrimony.

my uncle

died

doing:

nothing.

exceprt from notes on yesterday's meditation

these words originally appeared here on 28 August 2010:

my current journal

"start with pranayama followed by mantra. at some point it occurs to me: i'm just as far from the me i was in 2007 as the me i was in 2003. yet, the distance to the me i was the last year of college – before New York – seems closer than either. how are we to explain or graph these temporal geographies of mind, memory and nostalgia?"

"it was equal parts surprising and profound, obvious and sad. there is no going back to that summer when my enthusiasm for life and spirituality was eclipsed only by my inexperience and naiveté. this is not to lament their passing, merely and observation, because the perspective i enjoy now is informed not only by exuberance, or the novelty of something new, but fortified by the years of perseverance and commitment..."

10 weeks and counting since

modified journal entry, 18 June 2010

I drove the stretch from the end of the Turnpike up to Cordele, which meant driving through the Ocala-Gainesville-Lake City corridor. Those invisible, unforgettable towns of O’Brien and High Springs and Live Oak haunted me, and I was literally retracing my past, passing by the signs for all the towns once – and ever? – soiled with N____.

The peanuts I ate that morning hung at the top of my stomach, a cramping reminder of the nausea and pain of North Florida, and the allergies kicked in next, leaving me with the headachy breathlessness of unidentified allergens and nostalgia. Twelve hours later, with everything quiet except for the sound of my yin and her cousin talking downstairs in the kitchen, I saw so clearly that my body was taking on the pains of the things my mind could not bear.

Seeing the banal green signs, I gave them only the slightest mention, like stopping at Leo’s for a slice or returning to visit Ocala Nikki, scourge and scoundrel and saint of Silver Springs. But underneath the flippancy of these utterances was the dreadful tissue-bound memory of soul-sickness and unspeakable miseries trapped inside the marrow.

By the time we switched drivers in south Georgia, I laid back and slept through Macon where N____ and I once stopped and took pictures of the graveyard:

Macon tombstones circa 2003

I finally opened my eyes at I-475 with Atlanta in the horizon, where a whole new set of flashback, beauty and trauma awaited me...

reflections on question, representation and beauty

part one: question

the question was asked:

"why are we here?"

some people answered.
some people said nothing.

one person wrote:

"so we can leave."

a) on the grossest level, this means nothing more (or less) than the certainty of bodily death; and, while this fact seems mundane, true understanding can only be obtained as a side effect of our ultimate demise. this being the case, i will refrain from speculation.

b) on a more subtle level, leaving means much more than the body – it means recognizing the transitory nature of our beings. the "me" writing this now is not the "me" i was when i started. for example, i have just heard the most amusing song:

but i know that this amusement will be gone by this time tomorrow; it will probably be gone within the hour. this is the nature of thought and emotion.

the longer i study the nature of the (by which i mean "my") mind, the more convinced i become of two things: the contents of the mind are ever-
changing; and, at least so long as we are embodied, the mind itself is ever-
present. memory inevitably fades or fabricates, and even those moments when we let go of identification can only be read against the moments that came before and after.

so, why are we here? we are here so we can leave, so we can let go of all those moments before and after – the moments we believe our existence can ever be fixed, defined or understood.

part two: representation

last night i sat in a room with eight other people and we stared at a machine approximately equivalent to the one upon which i am typing. the machine presented a two dimensional image of a person in Vancouver. the words spoken in Vancouver were transmitted to the room filled nine people in Florida. sometimes the technology worked well, but other times:

without saying so, the person in Vancouver was talking about the nature of representation. this is a topic with which i have some familiarity. afterward i picked up where he left off:

if one were to go to the beach, one could make a list of 50,000 distinct characteristics. each of these 50,000 characteristics would be unique to the moment. repeat this experiment 100 times. each time, the characteristics will be slightly, or vastly, different. and yet, there is some experience of the beach that is consistent. it cannot be named, nor can it be denied.

but this is too simple.

looking a little more deeply, one will inevitable encounter a problem. the sight of the water, for instance, is not instantaneous. the nature of light, the cornea, the optic nerve and the brain create a lag between perception and cognition that is insurmountable. therefore, to see the beach is actually to know the beach as it was; to hear the waves is to hear the waves as they were. the distance between us and the moment is structural, not conceptual, and everything in nature is pointing us to the answer given to the question in part one.

it is only

the persistent insistence of our existence

that prevents us

from
spinning
into nothing.

part three: beauty

an ancilla of last night's trans-continental discussion had to do with beauty and left me with more questions than answers. like all transcendental categories, beauty encounters substantial obstacles when one ventures to dip below the most superficial of levels, and here are three points i continue to ponder:

1) for starters if, as the truism argues, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" then who is it that trains the eye?

(i recall Laura Mulvey had something to say about this.)

2) furthermore, in defining beauty do we not also necessarily define its lack? does not, as Difranco says, everyone harbor a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room? if so, is beauty nothing more than a side effect of ego, a severing of oneself from the Source of all creation?

3) and most perplexingly, what does Morrissey think of all this?

"It's gruesome that someone so handsome should care."

awkward restarts, boredom and chronology

5:45 - alarm goes off

5:52 - get out of bed

6:03 - shower

6:10 - shave

6:21 - pack breakfast

6:30 - leave home

6:57 - arrive at school

7:27 - make 93 copies

7:42 - unlock classroom

8:00 - class begins

9:18 - class ends

9:31 - return library book

9:43 - eat breakfast

10:01 - respond to emails

10:32 - lament

10:36 - mope

10:47 - pace

11:00 - meditate

11:34 - speak to yin

11:36 - compare notes

11:47 - find lost water bottle

11:50 - eat homemade pretzels

11:59 - journal

12:07 - procrastinate

and all this, just to keep from saying:

i miss the mountains of summer

New York is like...

i first saw New York when i was eighteen years old. a woman who was not yet my lover lived on Long Island, in the same small fishing town where Jack Kerouac lived after achieving his celebrity. at the time i had not read Kerouac, and his eventual, looming presence was wholly absent from my mental geography.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i was more concerned with other imagined shadows, and i went searching for them in the alphabeted streets that run parallel to the East River. this romance grew over the coming years, and in keeping with my own mythology, i moved to New York immediately after graduating university. in time i would come to know that what seemed like fate was nothing more than the tired pull of the city, the cliched story of town and country, the familiar parable of innocence, disillusionment and returning to the places you thought you knew. last week, and the photo essay that follows, were/are precisely that:

(apparently) i (don't) love New York
(any more)

day one

my yin and i arrived on a Thursday afternoon, and traveled to the Lower East Side to peruse the galleries that have popped up in the last decade. on the walls i saw portraits of ghosts i chased fifteen years ago:

R.I.P. Joe Strummer

somewhere in the back of the mind i couldn't help but smile at the memory of myself in the fall of 1995. the extent of humanity's collective hubris is truly amazing, but nowhere is it so pronounced as in the self-concept of an eighteen year old male on the precipice of a new romance. it became difficult for me to separate the city from the woman, and ironically enough i would find myself making the same mistake four years later. this, too, is beside the point.

my yin and i strolled onward, and one of the great joys of New York, then same as now, are the absurd promotions and storefronts. for example, where else but Manhattan would it ever be appropriate to use the following images to advertise a children's hospital?

people send their children there?

in other places we saw instances of accidental profundity, which happens to be my favorite type:

the awning makes a valid point

we also came upon one store in which my yin will never be allowed to set foot:

never, never, never...

these charming curiosities begin to lose their luster, however, when one begins to look a little closer:

day two

my yin and i took the train in from Scarsdale on the second day, transferred at Grand Central, and finally came above ground in Union Square. throughout the summer Miranda July (one of my favorite Renaissance women) has had an installation scatted along the park:

only in New York would a 2:1 concrete to grass ratio be called a park

her work, as usual, was simultaneously clever, accessible and interactive:

approximately true

others, while not as sophisticated, were nonetheless entertaining:

hopefully, that is...

after perusing the art we headed to the Integral Yoga Institute, where my yin used to volunteer and eventually took her teacher training. we took part in the midday meditation and then sat down to eat lunch with a very skinny swami. although i had heard rumors that the IYI served nothing but brown food, the meal was quite delicious, especially the red dhal.

moving further towards the Hudson River, my yin and i took a stroll along the High Line. in spite of being full of tourists (like us), the old abandoned train line has been turned into something truly unique, allowing visitors to gaze out on some of the new condos that sprung up as part of the previous decade's real estate boom:

curvy building

angular building

and groovy windows

when we finally came down from the High Line, we strolled through Chelsea to check out the sundry art galleries that have dominated the New York art world since the Nineties. the best among them was not a gallery at all, but this building:

150 W. 17th Street

which houses all manners of Himalayan art. among my favorites was this statue:

my love of fornicating Buddhas is well-documented

and these costumes, which my yin and i may use as inspiration for our respective wedding attire:

his and hers?

day three

our third day began in Brooklyn, where my yin and i had spent the night with a friend from her Williamsburg days. after a tempeh breakfast bagel, we headed over to PS 1 and saw a lousy exhibit entitled "Greater New York":

"Lesser New York" would have been more accurate

that night we met an old friend of mine from North Carolina. although we hadn't seen each other in years, his assistance some time ago made a great impact on the eventual direction my life would take, and after a(n unbelievable) meal at Zen Palate i had an opportunity to thank him, something i had been meaning to do since 2006. unfortunately, our post-meal constitutional ran later than expected, and my yin and i ended up missing our train back to Scarsdale by approximately ninety seconds:

by the end of the day, my yin and i were exhausted

day four

museums. museum. museums. we started our fourth day at the Whitney, using the member cards loaned to us back in Westchester. an entire floor was devoted to the work of Christian Marclay:

thank heavens for free passes!

although i had never heard of Marclay, his whimsically indeterminate composition methods astounded me. my yin and i ended up staying for two separate performances, and unbeknownst to me, my yin took this groovy picture while i wasn't looking:

me, with graffiti score in background

to top it off, Marclay is still alive, which is more than i can say for most of the artists in the next museum on our list:

the Metropolitan Museum

the place was an absolute madhouse (it was a Sunday afternoon) and our entire reason for being there was to check out the bamboo on the roof:

much better than steel and concrete

sadly, the skies were overcast and threatening, so my yin and i had to sneak up a half-guarded stairwell to even get a peak at the installation. a sign said that 5000 bamboo poles were used along with miles and miles of nylon rope:

allegedly this ramp can hold 400 pound visitors

afterwards, my yin's photographer friend met us outside the Met, and the three of us took a bus downtown to Alphabet City where our journey began. she showed us pictures of a haunted house in Michigan and told us about the hoarder who was renting her apartment. ironically, none of the pictures from that coffee shop came out, and the only explanation that comes to mind is that my yin's friend is some sort of photogenic black hole, literally distorting the camera's optics so that she can later use and redeploy it to her own ends:

i
m
age
miss
in
g

after this encounter we all took the L train to Brooklyn once more and had dinner with my yin's cousins and their respective mates. the six of us shared a fantastic vegan dinner, and aside from one carnivorous New Zealander, everyone went home smiling, happy and full.

day five

our final day in New York was rainy and, appropriately, fell on a Monday. we went into the city early and milled about Greenwich Village, idly talking about what it would take for us to live in New York again. it was a strange feeling because we both want to want to live in New York – but we don't.

the city has lost its sheen somehow, and i don't mean in the typical "good old days" nostalgia. the city has changed, undoubtedly, but not nearly as much as me. whereas i once saw only excitement, now i cannot help but see all the anxiety and agitation that masquerades as creativity or mania.

the one image that captured it most clearly for me was walking up the ramp form the Metro-North in Grand Central Station. the people all piled on top of one another, pushing and bumping their way towards the exit. they looked exactly like cattle lined up in a slaughter house, and it made no difference if the person was headed to Wall Street or the Bowery (except, of course, the Bowery is no longer the Bowery). every one of them was caught in the same game, stuffed into one metal tube after another and whisked around in the bowels of the city.

we went home early that day and had a quiet meal in Scarsdale with our hosts. we talked about the city, about art, about history and the upcoming wedding. we talked about so many things that it was soon approaching midnight, and my yin and i excused ourselves to go to bed. she fell asleep before me that night, and i lay awake in bed wondering if perhaps we should leave immediately instead of in the morning.

it was a foolish idea, an idea that i would have followed ten years ago, and that is precisely the difference between

the me i was

and

the me i am.

(last year) North Carolina was like

1) last summer my yin and i spent less than a week in North Carolina.
2) this year we were able to stay two months.
3) i am re-acclimating to the routine of my quotidian Florida life.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that, while i find myself with plenty to say (or at least the desire to say), thus far adequate time has eluded me. i have a syllabus to prepare, yogurt to be made, and a full weekend of meditation ahead of me. until the opportunity to explore all the static and ideas and notions and commotion presents itself, i will have to return once more to self-plagiarism:

one year ago North Carolina was like...

l
o
n
g dinner table discussions

and

yellow jackets nesting
in my lover's hair.

the wondering

lurking fear
of

potential chance encounter.

meditating
to the sound
of gunfire
while
yellow
butter
flies
chase

dragonflies
mating
and

Jesus watches over

the
shoplifters

and transients
talk about the
recession

while

a dog chases
cattle staring
at a deer.

staring into
the bluest eyes
lakeside and windy

realization:

my mother's temperament

my father's capacity

tiger eye mala beads and

giggling climax at midnight.

transference, accuracy and the delicate art of perception

as part of my ongoing quest for "growth" i consistently, and sometimes constantly, engage in a dialogue with my yin (et al.) concerning the nature and geography of our beings, a character trait eloquently and accurately described by Bukowski as:

"I worry too much about my god damned soul."

but this is beside the point.

the point is that two things revealed themselves while my yin and i were on iChat with a half-Canadian madman. the first had to do with the phenomena of projection and transference, both predictable side effects of interpersonal communication. i have become somewhat familiar with these terms over the summer (largely through my reading of Lacan) but yesterday i understood them in a new way.

the problem with projection and transference is not that they happen (they are in fact unavoidable), nor that they happen without the subject's conscious awareness (which distinguishes it from libel and slander). furthermore, the traditional psychoanalytic model (at least as in my limited reading) seems to cordon off whatever tendency or emotion into the subject. the process of transference thereby allows the subject to project his internal state onto the other, giving him enough distance to recognize what was there all along.

the shortcoming in this formulation is that it neglects to recognize that all states of mind – anger, pride, envy or joy – always reside in both self and other. the division between one individual and another is as illusory as it is necessary, and the notion that we can achieve integration by tossing around our emotions like a game of hot potato is only partially accurate. the dilemma is that, in the process of projecting our own insecurities and doubts onto others, we tend to forget that all things are interconnected.

for example, take the emotion of feeling judged. in a given situation this emotion is often attributed either wholly to self (in the form of shame) or to the other (in the form of condemnation). perhaps both emotions are felt simultaneously, but even in this case most people feel a certain schizophrenia, vacillating between self-effacement and blame. the key is to recognize that there is no separation, that while the judgment one feels from an other is merely a reflection, it is nonetheless valid. my experience with this method has shown me that the sting disappears as soon as i realize that the gap between myself and another person is merely structural rather than essential, an aspect of the mind rather than part of who i am. of course the geography of my being (at least thus far) seems to preclude ever being rid of this gap, but that (at least for the time being) is digressing from the point.

returning to the point, the second thing i learned yesterday had to do with the nature of accuracy and perception. the mind (and especially my particular mind) believes that an accurate tabulation of the objective world provides a bulwark against the unavoidable onslaught of time, impermanence and uncertainty. even if this were true (it isn't), it would obviously depend upon one's flawless perception of the world around her; and, as every first year philosophy student knows, this type of accuracy is not within the capabilities of sensual perception.

this being the case, the attempt to "be certain" or "make the right decision" is actually a red herring, an attempt by the mind to do an end run around its own perceptual limitations. the instability of each waking (and dreaming (and sleeping (and dying))) moment is too much for the mind to bear, and so it clutches to the things that bring temporary comfort, while avoiding those things thought to be a source of pain.

if this is the nature of the mind, then, as V.L. Lenin asked,

"What is to be done?"

what i realized yesterday that the attempt to improve mental accuracy solely through the application is ultimately a waste of energy. this is not to say that ignorance is bliss, nor that one should go through life "willfully ignorant" as did out 43rd president:

guilty of "misunderestimation"

the most reasonable strategy is to focus instead on improving one's focus and clarity, so that we might recognize when we are out of balance. here, tough, one encounters a catch-22 not unlike the structural gap between self and other, because the attempt to gauge how far out of balance (or even in what direction) is unavoidably colored by the imbalance itself.

for example, take a crazy person and three easy steps:

(for the purposes of demonstration, the

crazy person will be written in first

person. do not attempt this at home.)

1) i'm crazy.
2) i realize i'm crazy.
3) is it therefore crazy to believe i'm crazy?

for more on diagnosing mental illness, see Michel Foucault

(the crazy person writing in first
person cedes control of the
keyboard. attempt this at home)

and so, returning to where i began, i am reminded once more of Bukowski, and how he described days like yesterday:

"Sunday, the worst god-damned day of them all."

the last time (two years later)

another version of this poem lives here.

the last time
(requiem for Alexander Solzhenitsin)

prelude:

I suppose one day we will be lovers

and none of these things will have mattered.

or

I suppose one day we will no longer want to be lovers

and none of these things will have mattered.

part 1:

The last time
is ten cherries in a bag,
smelling her on my hands
the whole way home.

I grab a soda,
they ask:

“what country did you get?”

staring at the same curvy mirrors
she chose not to install:

They ask why I didn’t bring her,
I ask: “did you get those mirrors at – ?”

part 2:

The Tao is falling apart
as she tells me:

“You have camel eyes, beautiful camel eyes”

reflecting back the image of her crying
as we made love:

“I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I ask:

“Do you want to talk about it?”

not until we’ve discussed Kurosawa and
seen how many ways we fall short of the truth.

And all this time in bed

is permeated with the smell of clocks

.esrever ni gninnur

part 3:

Mascara smudged raccoon eyes -
all sex, beauty and Madness.
I see her in that moment,
wild and free and
fractured and lost:

“I want to fall in love with you.”
“I don’t know who I am.”
“I feel all alone.”

We talk around these things, saying nothing, and
I stare at the ceiling, focusing on a point that
doesn’t move. We find our way back
into our clothes:

“I don’t want you to go”

but gravity always wins.

part 4:

She gives me cherries to take with me.
I count, searching for a sign;
there are only ten.

We leave in separate directions:
me east, her west, both headed north,
one short of a prime number.

I found it the next night; her
text arrived at 8:27pm, telling
me that Solzhenitsin died today.

Raleigh, synecdoches and self-plagiarism

last week my yin and i spent the weekend in Raleigh, visiting a friend of mine from high school. we had a fantastic time, and i was not only able to learn more about our government:

i, too, support the arson of memory

but also how to rock out like a superhero:

I Was Totally Destroying It

but this is beside the point.

the point is that it's been an odd sensation sense our return to the mountains, with our impending departure weighing on us as invisible and undeniable as time itself. when we drove back home last Sunday afternoon under overcast skies, my yin and i talked about the sadness of leaving. it was as if our weekend getaway served as synecdoche for our entire summer away, and now the inevitable preparations for the next leg of our journey have begun to bubble beneath the surface. i find my mind drifting to trivial things, like packing up the yogurt maker, or consolidating the spent newspapers strewn across our room, rather than offering my full attention to the present moment. it's odd because i feel no sense of dread about returning to Florida, only the cramping anticipation of having to say goodbye to another summer.

(and this, as one can read, brings out the melodrama).

it's not just the pain of leaving, but the uncertainty of what lie ahead. it seems that everything is either up in the air (work, school, etc.) or so far ahead as to make stable planning nearly impossible (wedding, leaving Florida, etc.). in spite of all this lugubriosity, things are moving right along (as they always do), and we're looking forward to next week's trip north.

i've been told by unnamed sources that our reinsertion into subtropical life will bring with it a clash of grooves, an overlap between the salted habits of beach life and the memory of the mountain air. this is undoubtedly true, but this morning it occurred to me that these overlaps (and disjunctions) can be a source of inspiration as well as stress. all art is born at the boundaries between experience and the things we think we know, between prediction and manifestation, between planning and inspiration. the rough edges between thought and life give rise to new forms, new manners of expression, new ways of seeing the world around us. John Berger knew this:

a temporary thank-you card

and this brings me round full circle, back to the high school friend to whom this missive was originally intended and subsequently expanded. we had not seen one another in fifteen years, and even when our contact was almost daily, it was invariably conducted under the veil of adolescent anxiety and depressions. as this trip has already taught me, reconnecting with old friends is better than expected, but last weekend was even more profound than those first few days in Atlanta.

maybe it was the company:

maybe it was the music:

or maybe it was the giant butterflies painted on brick walls:

the answer, as one might expect, is beside the point.

whatever the reason, my high school friend dwells in those places where all art is born, and the memory of our time together continues to be a source of inspiration.

list of symptoms (+ 1)

approximately one year ago i woke with the following list of symptoms:

time.
prose.
apathy.
banality.
headache.
digression.
lack of sleep.
loss of words.
loss of appetite.
thoughts of rain.
poetic anesthesia.
feelings of sadness.
sentence fragments.
frequent meditation.
repetition of mantra.
overuse of repetition.
pushing slightly further.
inability to communicate.
decreased dream intervals.
experimentation with ritual.
decreased sensitivity to time.
syllabic repression of emotion.
increased dependence on form.
recurring thoughts of insomnia.
insomnia thoughts of recurrence.
increased sensitivity to hypnagogia.
circular orientation of thoughtforms.
inability to recognize Oedipal fixation.
withdrawal from friends and love ones.
occasional abortion of midday samadhi.
extended periods of occasional attempts.
obsessive experimentation with nostalgia.
increased consumption of media products.
rapid onset of dramatic temporary solitude.
occasional lapses in obligatory self-reflection.
inexplicable sensitivity to arbitrary past karma.
forced examination of self-defeating tendencies.
fear marked by prominence of existential ideation.
six years spent in lugubrious celebration of this day.

this morning i felt much the same, with the addition of a single symptom:

six years spent in lugubrious celebration of this day.
fear marked by prominence of existential ideation.
forced examination of self-defeating tendencies.
inexplicable sensitivity to arbitrary past karma.
occasional lapses in obligatory self-reflection.
rapid onset of dramatic temporary solitude.
increased consumption of media products.
obsessive experimentation with nostalgia.
extended periods of occasional attempts.
occasional abortion of midday samadhi.
withdrawal from friends and love ones.
inability to recognize Oedipal fixation.
circular orientation of thoughtforms.
increased sensitivity to hypnagogia.
insomnia thoughts of recurrence.
recurring thoughts of insomnia.
increased dependence on form.
syllabic repression of emotion.
decreased sensitivity to time.
experimentation with ritual.
decreased dream intervals.
inability to communicate.
pushing slightly further.
overuse of repetition.
repetition of mantra.
frequent meditation.
sentence fragments.
feelings of sadness.
poetic anesthesia.
thoughts of rain.
loss of appetite.
loss of words.
regurgitation.
lack of sleep.
digression.
headache.
banality.
apathy.
prose.
time.

(re)remembering Merce Cunningham

i saw him only

1

time

2

years ago in Miami.
i watched red numbers

counting down

0:20:00

until

0:00:00

nothing

i watched green numbers

counting up to

1:30:00

(applause)

i watched him bow

wheelchaired and prophetic.

triangles, memory and high school

part 1: question/answer/question

what is the difference between push and pull?

does this masked man know?

how about these women?

can you find the answer on a sign post?

or does this room hold the answer?

part 2: if/then

if the answer is consistently "no" to these questions, then what is the standard by which we measure the constancy of truth?

part 3: short/long sentences

three days later i saw my oldest childhood friend. we recounted our first meeting differently. whose memory is less flawed?

i sat in a hot room on a sweaty leather couch with a stomach full of pizza and the dull mix of sadness and boredom.

part 4: the sublime wisdom of the semi-colon

this, too, is good; this, too, shall pass.

part 5: ages upon meeting

image 1: 20

image 2: 16/29

image 3: 18

image 4: 33

part 6: reprise

why does this truck have an air conditioner unit?

part 7: answer/question/answer

there are no answers. are there no answers? no answers are there.