Like a mouth, they take the world in, allowing it to enter the body; but unlike the jaw, there is no mashing, no smashing, no mastication: only the delicate conversion of light into impulse impressed upon the mind. It is the mind that smashes,taking in the forest and separating the trees from each other, then taking the trees and separating them into branches and leaves, bark and roots, and then once again, refining the scene against every other forest afforded to memory, stitching things together in an act of sense-making.

We like to imagine our dominance. We are eaters Afterall, consumers. We have teeth in our eyes, and we mash up films and songs, then boil them down in our stomachs as we argue over their meanings. This dominance only occurs if we are the eater, the consumer; it offers us a seat above our victim, the male lion with its maw on the red throat of a cub.

The verb: consume. Meaning, to eat, from the Latin consumere, meaning to “use, eat up, or waste” - from com, meaning together or altogether , sumere coming from “sub” meaning under, and emere meaning “to buy /take “ - to take under oneself and use that which one has taken. This term, in the modern sense and common use of “consuming media”, implies a far more passive ( while maintaining its mirage of dominance), glutinous act, a verb that has forgotten it is a verb.

But I feel the term , while useful, is both overused and inaccurately understood. It works well for those who benefit from the consumer believing they are in control, but it does us a disservice. The eyes are not a mouth. The ear is not a tooth. The heart is not a jaw. Our passions are not merely appetites. We do not rule over what we see, hear, or engage with, with an iron mind; there is always an exchange. A symbiosis.

When watching a film, one is a witness to a world that would not have occurred otherwise- an eye into a world that naturally ( without cameras and those who wield them ) would have remained within the mind of the auteur. Even in the oral traditions, one would have listened intently as the speaker cast a spell over them, pulling them through the story with bated breath. What is given ( sculpted, forced, carved, enshrined, enscribed, something of violence something of great will and structure ) is taken in: that itself is true, however the taking is part of an exchange, not a theft, even if the audience does feel like they are getting away with something in watching the bodies of two strangers heave up and down in the projectors light. The story needs a witness, or else it is no more than private memory.

I worry that this word “consume” ( although I am not suggesting meaning changes, rather further understanding on the part of the “consumer” or witness ) has led those making art to make something for the sole purpose for it to be eaten, rather than making something to have a relationship with. Good art changes both the maker and the witness: a sculptor grows muscles as he carves them in marble, the viewer of the statue is stirred to a new emotion, to revelation.

The thoughts artists have impressed upon me have changed the landscape of my mind, my personality, my body. I cut my own hair so my Halloween costume would be accurate. I dream in three-act stories teeming with edible symbols. I crouch low and line up my sight with an angle of light cutting across the kitchen to preserve it for my own memory, a noncamera’ed photograph. I pause the memory mid-crouch and recall a landscape at the museum, where the paint itself seemed to glow and eat up the whole room, pulling me into its self-contained majesty, commanding that I give something of myself to it.

x

nim

On writing

I am told by a friends to place a doorway into my work, that people need to be told where to place their feet when walking. I have machete’d my way through the forest just fine, why can’t I expect the same of others? There is no entry point to the wilderness, you start and find yourself engulfed.

On wildness

His eyes dialate as a fly kamikazes for the window; in the expanded pupil I watch instinct conquer domestication. He tears across the hardwoods the lineoleum and smacks into the wall as the fly turns and beelines for the living room. He shakes it off, and follows suit. God help us graceless creatures, pissing in weird containers and chasing little things.

On People

In parks, offices and churches; animal, human, something else, inventing god over and over again (for fun or for means to an end or because there is something there and we will never name it or because one cannot possibly understand the depths of my one’s own hunger without breaking their mind.)

On guilt

When my grandmother died I repeat the phrase “she’s dead” until I arrived to a point of total acceptance. This ritual lasted two hours, my muttering littering the floor of the airbnb. I carry it. I loathe the blindfolds and increasingly complex measures of denial: here we are, here is the feeling ,the weight, why are your palms pressed across your face? The dead are not sleeping.

On abstaining

I don’t know what to say here, I give myself everything: if pride is involved even a wound can become a home. Those who starve themselves are skilled in the art of making feasts from crumbs.

On Cyncism

Early nettles are soft, lamblike and later grow stinging spurs to protect themselves from being consumed or stopped upon. This world will not devour you the instant joy enters the room, pleasure is not a death sentence.

On Truth

Needing no permission to exist it often fails to fit any one narrative cleanly or conveniently. I was not good, and I did my best to resolve all lose ends: you will render the godhead from your disdain and worship what’s most convenient.

On writing ( again )

To scratch an itch in public, to bake a loaf of bread, to orgasm and let myself lay flushed and sprawled about the sheets, to pick a scab, to look at someone beautiful and imagine they are imagining me, to dig a thumb beneath the muscle and peel it off the bone— done in pursuit of a sentence. I find hitting the bullseye unsatisfying and would prefer an exploded hillside.

x-

nim

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got up and shaved myself into a checkerboard pattern. No real reason to do this other than I’d been in a stranger’s kitchen last night (lovely lips, lovely scent: dripping vanilla and tobacco all over the leather seats) and the kitchen had these black-and-white tiles. I thought how lovely it would be for me to have a kitchen like that- and seeing as I don’t have a kitchen, I can at least do something with my carpet. It took longer than I expected; I had to section off all the pieces with a fine-tooth comb and stick them with gel to tame them. I then used the smallest razor I had and went to town- lost track and did the same thing to my legs, calves, looking like I’d grown my own socks. I thought how lovely it would be to go to that person’s apartment, lie against the cool tiles, and have someone take a picture of my hills and valleys, seeing as they matched the tiles so nicely. But it’s more fun to imagine these things- more fun to dream than to call up some bloke and explain the simple fantasy matching yourself to the tiling.

Monday:

hangover

Tuesday:

coffee, work. I wore bright green socks under my nylons today, and they crinkled up around the ankles, making the flesh look all lumped and bunched. I pointed them out to a coworker who lifted up her wool trousers — she had the same thing going on! We laughed about our condition and went back to work.

Wednesday:

groceries. The bag of beans spilled all over the parking lot, and I got it replaced for free. I wonder how many times one can do this and get away with it.

Thursday:

rain poured well through the night and into mid-morning. I didn’t sleep. I can’t decide whether or not I like the rain, but I think it makes me lonely as I piled all my dirty laundry atop the bed to give myself something a bit more weighted to sleep under.

Friday:

I was late and said nothing about it. Got the work done anyway. Going to bed at 6pm as I am tired. Goodnight.

Saturday:

There was a big green cat in the window of a toy store, filling the whole window, with a head too big for its body. 50$ for the thing! I stood there, dreaming up an escape plan after the robbery— how I’d hide in the dumpster or blame it on a child— when a kid walked out, dragging the thing behind him, holding his mother’s hand. I stuck my tongue out at him. I’m 31, there are bigger things in my life than green cats trapped in windows, but I can’t be bothered with bigger.

I met Julica at the bar; she was there when I arrived and said something about the time as I ordered three of the cheapest drinks off the menu. I told her about the cat. She asked how long I’d stood there, which I said didn’t matter, and then asked why I didn’t try to buy it if I wanted it so badly. I then brought up her brother’s divorce to shift the focus elsewhere.

Why didn’t I? I am wildly drunk now, my words are traveling up the side of the page, and answers evade me. He’s getting custody of the kids, as it turns out, his ex-wife ran off to Costa Rica. I’ve never been.

Sunday:

There was no honey left in the jar, so I did not eat oatmeal. Kept thinking about Julica’s questions, kept pissing myself off with them. Didn’t help that I hadn’t eaten.

At the store, the cost of honey was up 3$ so I decided I would only have toast this week.

Monday:

went to work. Came home. Julica called— I didn’t answer on account that I had nothing to talk about. Roasted a whole chicken and ate it while lying on the floor flipping through a trashy magazine I had grabbed yesterday at checkout, staining the corners with grease.

Tuesday:

yearly performance review— “Where are you going with all this? What’s your five-year plan?” And whatever else nonsense questions my boss had to ask. I said something in response to them, but it was definitely a lie. As if I had any actual values outside my rotation of hedonistic activities, I would be doing something other than lathering each slice of toast with an excess of overpriced butter.

Julica left a message last night. She and her husband are purchasing a home together, and my stomach rose into my throat and started knocking on my teeth. Good for her.

Wednesday:

came home, showered, and stared at myself, naked in the full-length mirror. The hair had grown back, and the unshaven ones had grown longer; a checkerboard pattern was still visible, although blurred. I should return her message. There’s a ring around the inside of the tub I’ve yet to scrub away.

Thursday:

worked, returned her message. My happiness for her reveals the hole in my life. I stare at things through windows. She is sitting behind the glass, drinking tea and making plans. She will still eat her breakfast even without honey. I left my congratulations after the tone and kept it short; if I say too much, I’ll become obvious.

Friday:

Someone brought in gluten-free doughnuts. I have never eaten something so dry.

Saturday:

Sunday: it doesn’t make sense

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

dinner with Julica. I ate quickly, saying little while she recounted the buying process, the offers, inspections, and everyone’s excitement. I asked questions to be polite, attempting to hide the fact that I couldn’t put myself aside, not even for her joy. I’m happy for her, but something still writhes inside me, a wet toad trapped in a child’s palm.

It’s… no, she deserves what she has; she’s lovely even when she pisses me off. I don’t want the house or the husband; I prefer my solitude, but rather… I can’t say. Or won’t say, I’m not sure what will happen when I can finally admit things to myself. Means I’ll have to change.

I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight, so I will lie here until my eyes dry out and something like sleep, although without rest or dreams, approaches me.

Thursday:

socks under nylons, coworker is leaving for a new position at a different company. Says it pays more.

Friday:

not going out. I’m upset, and need to know why.

Friday again:

tried cleaning the whole kitchen. Still upset.

Friday once more:

the entire apartment is clean, which is a relief; unfortunately, I’m left with these thoughts.

Saturday:

I have been lying to myself for quite some time. Between my earlier twenties and now, I have gotten very used to it.

Sunday:

I am going to call Julica and tell her everything.

The color behind my eyes when I close them is purple. Certain and deep.

Before I sleep, I start to dream, and Matter stumbles into shapes which take fight and flight against that dark canvas. If

I say nothing in that cavern, if I do not force or impress a picture upon the scene or even impress the realization of the scene upon myself or name anything— I can continue my enjoyment. As soon as I make way to word, the beauty is lost.

so in the waking life, I suffer the same. How helpful, how frustrating: a Name.

Actually, it’s Saturday,

“Here is a pen and scratchpad. Take time to write a few notes about how you feel and any new symptoms that have developed. “

“Well, there’s now a constant ache to prayer, and I’ve made a dessert I had once as a kid.”

“So it’s severe.”

“I guess you could say that.”

For the next hour or two, the dessert and what it represents are dissected.

“How did you eat it? With your hands or with a fork? Did it taste the same? Did it fix anything? Was the dessert masculine or feminine? What came to mind as the sugar crushed between your molars, what images, where was the ache, and can you describe it in under 30 seconds because we are running out of time.”

I leave with my purse filled with alcohol pads that I’ve been slowly collecting after each visit, on each is the printed image of a sunset, for reasons I don’t understand. I never associated those cold, wet squares with brilliant displays of light- and honestly, each time I use one I see the therapists growing uni brow in the corners of my mind, how it rests atop his glasses as if he were some comically constructed cartoon.

Sunsets make me think of the lake I grew up next to, which, in lieu of a constant companion, I often wrote and performed songs for. I’d find some unattended dock, check behind my shoulder, open my mouth, and sing for as long as the trance lasted. Earnestly, poorly, my big heart against the sky.

Large bodies of water listen incredibly well, and they don’t pester much—only spitting up bits of driftwood or people’s lives they tossed out.

I used to scour the beach for plastic bottles, cans, and other scraps. I grew especially fond of walking past groups of young men, picking up what was obviously their litter, and trying to make them feel bad about it as they asked me to join them. I don’t think I wanted to feel superior — I think I wanted a story- one to give or take, I’m unsure, but I’m now sure they didn’t talk about it longer than calling me a self-centered asshole before getting on with their volleyball game. ( which I was. What teen isn’t?)

I think I wanted to be called beautiful by them, but as I understood beautiful things to be fleeting, I understood that I had to walk away: in the interest of both beauty and myself.

While I certainly wasn’t polluting the environment with my songs or my weird ways of socializing, I was still littering. Trying to find ways to leave myself in other people’s heads, scrounging the sand to make my existence more than routine.

Speaking of routine— the alcohol pads. By now, I have approximately 150 of them, far more than I’ll ever use, taking up space that could be used for more important things. I think a part of me is trying to get my money’s worth. There’s this unease I carry with me, too. Which is why I’m here, pilfering the alcohol pads, waiting for my therapist to finally give me the big list of exactly what is wrong with me and precisely what I can do to fix it. So far, he’s given me nothing and just tells me to bill my insurance and see him the following week, which I do, and our conversations follow the drag path we’ve previously established.

Which leads me to my conclusion: either their is nothing wrong with me at all, I’m merely mildly histrionic with hypochondriac tendencies ( a modern person ) and I’m being used as a steady stream of income or, and this one is unlikely, there’s something deeply disturbed with me and he’s taking his time to crack it open as to not shatter me.

I mean, I’ve done research myself, if you can even call it that, Research. Letting ill-informed opinions fill my stomach while I try to piece together some mental image of what I look like from the outside. So far, each time I wrestle with the idea of myself, I’m wrestling with a shifting blur. She wants to, she becomes. She tastes, touches. She follows shiny things, gets distracted by the veins beneath her skin. I like her, I think. She’s floaty.

Now, as I’m sitting here, thumbing apart the wet leaves of the alcohol pad, what it is I’m trying to cure is the issue of having a body. Or rather, the lack of the issue, the state of going through life and having things stick with you longer than you want, because you are a learning creature. That is your habit, your adaptation. You learn, you carry weight— and as I’ve never been hunted, I’ve made my own beasts out of boys and dessert cakes, filling my purse with unwanted sunsets.

There are plenty more details I don’t want to forget: the swing in the birch tree, the grapevines, the too-stiff diving board, dipping red currants into bowls of sugar. The trailer, too, and coming home late in the evening covered in dust and scratch marks from the hay bales—how no matter how long we stayed, it never felt like long enough.

The shed in the backyard. The wobbly picnic table. The waffled concrete tiles that weren’t good for drawing with chalk on, but we did anyway. The wooden fence. The little wooden door for the milkman, back before he was put out of a job.

Picking up sticks in the front lawn. Jumping back and forth over the ditch, being told not to and doing it anyway. The closet at the end of the basement stairs, the closet under the basement stairs. The carpet that burned your knees. The support pole we weren’t supposed to swing around and did anyway. The near-endlessness of the basement crawl space. The root cellar. Grandpa’s workbench. Grandma’s collection of spoons and thimbles. Crawling on the cabinets to get sweets. Ice cream that melted before you could eat it. The horses—and how, if you held your hand flat enough, they wouldn’t nibble your fingers, though it was still scary the first few times.

I could state the obvious: time has passed, I’m older, and I haven’t been there in years. It feels strangely revelatory, such a basic acknowledgment. I haven’t been in the branches of that apple tree in so long I can’t recall the last time—and I’m certain it wasn’t a conscious ceremony.

Or perhaps it was. I was a strange kid, maybe too aware of loss. I might have bowed beneath its arms and said farewell before running off to have my hand-me-down Barbies beat up Ken.

I think dying is like this: something happens for the last time, and you don’t realize it until it’s four in the morning and the cat you never thought you’d own is stepping on your bladder, begging for a midnight snack.

When you are dead, I suppose you don’t realize it at all. Not until you are born again—if that happens. I don’t think it does. I used to. I don’t give myself excuses anymore. Or maybe you realize it only once you’ve seen the faces of everyone you’ve loved and everyone who’s ever left, and it feels like one long party—running under the tables again, sticking a finger in the cake and getting away with it. And then you realize everyone is there.

Everyone was there. And so were you.

Death: the end of the slip-and-slide, the second conscious childhood.

I was in a hurry to get older because I associated age with control. I’ve gotten some of that control, but it’s limited. I mostly control my emotions, and even then I’m still subjected to four-a.m. whims. I hated being a kid. I hated how my feelings never had anywhere to land, how no matter what I drew or wrote or made—even if I liked it—I knew it was ugly. I was excited to be good at things. I didn’t forget how to be bad, or how to mess around, but when did I get so serious?

Even my husband is silly. I am stiff with fear. Afraid that any mask slipping will land me in time-out again. But adults don’t put other adults in time-out. Even murderers have it easy these days— If you have a good lawyer, you can kill someone. That seems to be how it works.

And anyway, I’m going to die. Might as well have fun. Might as well loosen up before I join all the stiff companions.

What would I like to do before I die?

I’d like to be a mother. I’d like to climb that apple tree again. I’d like a little house. I’d like to look for marbles on the beach. I don’t really care about publishing a book—I’d rather get ice cream. I’d like to walk to the park with my parents still in love. I’d like to see the dog pulling on the leash again, able to walk.

That won’t happen.

He hates her.

The dog is dead.

I need to focus on what I can do.

I’d like to have long hair, down to my mid-back. I’d like to go swimming and build sandcastles at the beach. I’d like to be sunburnt again. I’d like to draw with chalk outside. I’d like to eat Special K for breakfast and go out with milk staining my shirt, splashing in my best rain boots. I still need money so I’ll make beautiful things to pay for it all.

Why are my desires so simple? When I think about living forever I think only of Sunday mornings.

I could travel the world, but all I care about are my small, perfect moments scattered everywhere.

I think I want to visit Paris. Tokyo too. Mostly for the food. I’m always hungry—even when I’m full.

I’d like an apple tree of my own. Someone else climbing it. I’d like to kiss the sun again.

In the fireplace sit three blown glass orbs: the one, encased in a fine netting tied about its form in a diamond pattern; the other two, free from the net, prone to rolling about and catching the light from the surrounding candles.

Japanese fishing floats. They were a gift from my brother and father-in-law—I had specifically asked them to look for these little gems on the rocky shores of Alaska —and despite their initial doubt in me, they found three along the coastline, as I had said they would. As I had wanted them to be. I did my best not to gloat upon receiving the three of them, nestled together like the eggs of a rare bird.

By the 1970s, Japanese fishing companies switched to plastic floats as they were cheaper to produce and easier to replace. Convenience is the beauty-killer.

The original process of making the glass floats is rather involved. The glassblower picks up molten glass on the blowpipe and begins shaping the orb, carefully blowing and molding it as desired. Finally, the orb is separated from the blowpipe, leaving an open belly button, which is then sealed and smoothed to maintain a spherical shape. (Occasionally, kanji would be stamped into the still molten seal- for ownership purposes. )

Despite the mold’s uniformity, each orb is slightly different. Air bubbles remain stretched and trapped within the hardened glass, forming little islands across its surface, each one created during the spinning expansion of its birth, perhaps trapping the breath of its creator. A sign of its handcrafted nature, a marker of pride.

This, of course, takes time. And time is money. And worn hands. And long nights.

It’s terribly inconvenient to wake up early, to eat breakfast in silence while the sun slips over the horizon and illuminates the sleeping world. How much of a hassle it is to heat the furnace, to spin the blow stick, and watch as the unmade thing takes form. And it really is such a drag that it takes years to learn the intricacies of the process, to understand the secret language of glass and fire, and to develop an intimate relationship with a craft that becomes an art. It’s even more awful to consider that the knowledge must be maintained, so one must then pass the knowledge down to an eager apprentice in order to continue the lineage. Really is quite horrible.

Far more convenient (especially if your money is more real than anything) to develop an unfeeling machine that cannot cry, sweat, or dream. Far better to run that thing into the ground after years of use. The best part is, when it dies, there’s no uncomfortable round of condolences. There’s nothing to mourn because there was little there to begin with.

The offshoring of the responsibility of creation results in ugliness and excess. Things are made to be bought and sold- not to be beloved heirlooms or holders of memory; they fall apart before one can even come to love them. It never feels like enough has been done because the human has done nothing—the human has pressed a button and poured in a few chemicals. There is no mark of the human in the work.

In even the most pristine paintings, there is a touch of life- a corner where the brush dragged, a smudged fingerprint, the artist’s first attempt at the sleeping beneath the final lacquer. By shirking responsibility onto machines, one may feel they have gained control of time, but with the extra time now present, there is a lack of purpose. The removal of human responsibility from creation hollows both the object and the maker alike

While nature seeks to be efficient and avoid excess energy, it does not seek convenience. Even in decay, nature takes her time, breaking down the bodies of creatures into their finest particles, returning them to the soil to be useful, once again. Convenience, for the sake of itself, that is something new, something we’ve sold to ourselves recently —although I say this as someone whose life has been greatly eased by the invention of the washing machine.

Time is a precursor for life- in order for something to live, it must take time and fuse it within its own being to change. Berry bushes start as a seed that gets caught between your teeth and spat out. Life started out by chance. I started out as a conversation between two adults. And here I am now, filling myself with time, always indulging in the present. The idea of instantaneous anything is contradictory to the processes of nature, art, and life.

The thought of something may be instant, but it did not arrive in that moment. It was formed and suggested long ago through learning and experience, and has only now surfaced in response to stimulation. Time is an ingredient in the mix. And it would seem that the more time poured into something, the longer it tends to last, and the more beautiful it becomes. Skill is cumulative over time. So is knowledge. To spend six hours on a sculpture as an amateur is not the same as spending six hours on a sculpture as a master. A master has absorbed within themselves years of effort and knowledge and pours it back into the sculpture, resulting in something truly beautiful.

Taste is subjective; what one finds beautiful is subjective. Regardless of medium, one cannot help but marvel at something masterfully made. The existence of beauty, the techniques and tricks that one uses to coax beauty out from nothingness or chaos, is objective. It exists. Process + physiological response.

Presently, there is an obsession with immediacy: convenience, and thus, there is an excess of the material of convenience: Plastic. Microwaveable meals, bags, containers, clothing, and plastic flooring. But convenience as a value above all has come at a great cost. It is here we find ourselves floating in a poreless, textureless world, which is nothing to connect to but rather to project upon and slip between our own imaginings.

Periods of ugliness, excess, and alienation are often labeled as endings. Crowds of Cassandra’s flock to the stage to pronounce their latest apocalyptic prophecy, unaware that we are in the midst of a transitional churn.

During the Industrial Revolution, a creative rebellion occurred. A defiant response to the social and aesthetic pressures imposed on people, a return to traditional craftsmanship and natural materials. Nature served as a source of inspiration, a place people could root themselves in through change. Something similar is occurring. Things that risk being forgotten are resurrected in the waves.

Flotsam appears during these tidal events, washing ashore, lying about in ride pools, and strewn about the rocks. Driftwood, glass, broken plates. Car tires. Televisions. Mattresses. Cow bones. Pipes. Who decides what’s debris and what treasure? What is the difference between something unwanted and something beloved?

If time is an ingredient, it is a liquid, filling the spaces it is given and eroding them over itself, dissolving things beneath its weighted touch. Inversely, it holds things dear within its depths, preserving fossils, shipwrecks, and sunken cities. As the glass floats have survived the Pacific, so too other treasures survive adrift in time. The past cannot be returned to. Only ever revisited in the present through memory, or through engagement with flotsam, again, in the present day. It’s only a matter of years before something once forgotten washes ashore, to be found by someone seeking treasure between the rocks.

You are very sentimental over things that would be much better off in the trash. There’s a scar caught in the underside of your thigh that you can only see if you grip and twist the skin in a way that sort of hurts if your nails are too long.

Breakfast made you nauseous for a while: you went without it until you realized you’d rather feel sick than exhausted. You got used to that spongy feeling in the back of the throat, swallowing down strawberry yogurt. It was something, far better than nothing, which is a lesson you’ve only half learned.

Some days you are the sun. Others, you are a mouse. You hardly feel a person and slip between metaphors so easily, that’s why you are so lost at your big age.

Monday: tasks and tedium. Wanting sleep or sex.

Tuesday: dehydration: air thirst.

Wednesday: to say or not to say? What’s the point anyway? Out of olive oil. Out of skin cream.

Thursday: the scalp calls attention to itself— you scratch an itch and scratch your guilt the same.

Friday: the grocery list slipped under the refrigerator- you went in without and only got half of what you needed.

Saturday: night sweats. The washing machine thumps along. You’ve made plans and think of discarding them, but also how awful it would be to miss out- you get tired and laugh the whole time.

Sunday: draped over the bed, you push the calendar out of your head and try to soak up the light that’s coming through the crack in the window

Monday again: dread

Tuesday again: you’ve got to get groceries after work; the whole day feels compressed now. Like someone’s sucking it out the other end.

Sometimes when you're walking around in your head, you come across a hole where you know a memory should be. A taste, a touch, a sound. But there’s the void. And there’s every attempt to fill it, but it crumbled at the bottom. Moving on, you watch a video. Then another, then another. When you close your eyes, the afterimage burns dizzy, and it’s hard to keep up. You swear off opinions. You swear off sugar. You swear to yourself change, but only change half, but it is, in fact, better than nothing.

Something is always better than nothing.

You think: there is no no-thing, everything is something, even nothingness has a sort of thingy-ness to it—all springy and reflexive. Like a trampoline pushing back on everything, making sure it stays in place. There’s a sale on beans: I’ll buy three extra cans. Is my life the same life as the one I don’t know about? Would I always end up here regardless of action? Do I deserve this? Should I get six instead of three? Cans of beans last a long time and are so versatile.

A car rushes by, horn blaring. You cover your ears and get on with it, one foot in front of the other, tag itching in the collar. You’ve got scissors somewhere….

Above the traffic sings a robin. They’ve been coming back earlier and earlier each year- always right before the last snowfall. They eat up all the winterberries and happily drop the remains on the closest windshield. You learned recently that birds get drunk.

The sugar in the berries ferments into alcohol, and if the birds eat enough of it, they become intoxicated as well— fat little bodies lying perfectly contented in the snow.

You are not a bird but you know you could become one if you tried.

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A great deal of time was spent discussing who the original was. We checked for markings,inspecting the plains of each other’s back, beneath the shoulder blades for a sign.

On each shoulder blade, we both bore half a freckle, which aligned when we stood back-to-back. We concluded that we were both half old and half new. A true split, fragmentation without replication. Spring water bubbled up in the spot where we were born.

The valley town did little to welcome us, their suspicion evident in heavy brows, trailing around their ankles like low-hanging smoke. A pear costs a coin. For us, it cost two, then four, then six. Perhaps the issue was names- there hadn’t been time to find any coming back down the mountain. We found a book in the little house that had once belonged to our BodySource, slipped it open, and pointed blindly, claiming the little word beneath the finger.

I became “apple”.

And she became “Francis “.

Together we were “appleFrancis” or just “Us.”

It was the naming of each other that cut us apart. We had no need for names previously. There was the wind, the turning of seasons, the rush of wide steps flying down the sides of granite; there was the juice dripping down her chin, my feet sore and worn as we went to sleep, candlelight glowing warmth around the edges of our shut eyes.

Mornings, floorboards creaked while I heated water, she measured oats into two bowls—hot water, cream, honey. Her reflection pooled in my spoon, mine in hers.

Afternoons were spent between odd jobs and wandering the hillsides, foraging for mushrooms, nuts, and wild berries. We picked our fingers in search of sweetness, drank from each other’s sweat. A unified front, we were tender, calloused from the labor, selling what we refrained from eating. The early world felt like an endless game.

Evenings, we’d sleep either entirely full or completely empty, dreaming of lamb, something spiced and hearty that would stick to the bones. Our dreams are a shared projection arriving at the back of our eyes. Dawn would flood the room, and we’d awaken on the same breath. But now our dreams are on either side of the hill, one staring down towards the rivers, the other up to the clouds.

Three mornings after we named ourselves, Francis got up early. She left me alone with the songbirds, filling the air with their back-and-forth calling. I made the hot water, measured out the oats into two bowls, and poured cream and honey over both. And sat, watching the steam rise in two spiraling pillars, never touching. When it was clear to me that she wouldn’t be returning, at least not soon, I ate, staring at the bottom of the bowl.

Francis returned that evening, red-faced, covered in lacy scratches, hands filled with heaven-bruised blue berries, her chest rising and falling out of line with my own, two separate seas.

“Look at what I’ve done!” Her joy eclipsed my fear. “Try one! I found them up on the ridge.”

She placed a single berry in my hand, and I popped it into my mouth. Sweet, with acrid seeds- like burnt licorice. I spat the seeds out in my palm. “Good! A bit bitter.”

“Oh, I like that about them. A bit of a surprise beneath it.”

I could not understand her pleasure. I went about my own, “Well, it’s my turn now.”

“But it’s late!” she protested.

“Well, I think it’s only fair. You went out, now I get a turn.” I said, searching for an oil lamp in the large wooden cabinet. “Your oatmeal is cold, by the way. “

She pouted, topped cold mush with blue jewels. “See you later?”

“I’ll be back by morning.”

The night opened its arms around me, pulling me forward, the lamplight illuminating just enough to see where I was placing my feet. One after the other, listening to the sounds of muffled laughter from the village’s only tavern. How she would have loved to see what they were laughing about and join in. I turned my head away.

The night was filled with unfamiliar sounds, owls, the scream of a distant vixen, and the creaking of ancient trees against one another. Sound carried further, unimpeded by the sun’s rays. I listened for the River.

Through the pines and smoke, I followed the river’s song to its swelling banks. I rested on a boulder, tracing its rough surface.

The moon shone proudly above, a bowl of milk stuck in the dark heavens, illuminating the riverside in pale blues. I set down the oil lamp atop the boulder and made my way to the water’s edge, cold lapping up at my ankles.

Beneath the water, dark shapes swam, muscled and sleek, freckled fins fighting the currents towards unseen pools. My hands itched—impatient, hungry.

A splash! Arms shattering the water, fingers clenched around shimmering scales. I plunge my face, open-mouthed, driving my teeth into its armor, breaking its weight through the surface. Metal filling my mouth. Startled by my own success, I scream, drop the fish, and shoot my hands down again before its broken body drifts downstream.

I waded back to the river’s edge, laughing at my shining prize. Its scales gleaming in the moonlight, water dripping off in tiny jewels.

I returned, wild—scales between my teeth, lamp light forgotten, night wind carrying me home.

-

pt.1-pt2. of……

I have fled to the mountains.

You understand why, of course, we’ve discussed this point to exhaustion. My prerogative, to come first, to embrace fever.

I’ve been obsessed with fire, with burning. My hands provoke the match, in the opposite of heat, I find the same sensation. Crisp. Electric.

This edge, two extremes conjoined at the hips, is what keeps me alive, and I seek proof here, 100 feet below the clouds.

In needing to prove this, I’ve begun an experiment: fission. The self-this thing needs to be split open clean, starting at the mouth-like wanting wound and cutting up through the crown, into deep atmosphere. I’m too precious with life. I coddle the thing, as if it has not learned language and teeth and fury, as if it has not invited flight for itself. As if it has not grown wars upon its back, how it breathes with its own tail down its throat.

Anyways, this fission. Indeed, others have accomplished this — it seems that lightning strikes the high places often. But as it is a sensation, I cannot imagine I seek to replicate the results.

When broken open, I will taste how much of me there is- how big and blue, metallic and floral. Better and worse, process process process, refine the splinters and the indent in my bed.

Hypothesis: If I split, then something will rush to fill the gap.

Secondary Hypothesis: If I tear myself open, then life will come out in all directions

Experiment:

Take myself out to the ozone and sit naked atop it. Place a mirror above. One below, beneath my bare skin. Wait for a storm, one on the empire winds of late March, the silent witness of the world.

Hold out a copper wand, one that twists into either finger beneath the nail. Embrace what strikes,

record the notes of night jasmine, burnt hair, and whatnot.

If I split- note what rushes. The wind, the water, the earth up to hold my tender head.

Record the lengths of winding scars on either twin- note the colors and whether or not they spark when touched.

If I remain, note what was the same from the beginning. My want of music, crying for another shape, a kind one. Chip away with beaked desire at any cracks that may have formed.

Breakout: Night Jasmine again, running from my house at midnight, socked feet in wet grass.

Answer: I will only ask more questions. Results only answer so much.

I do not hold any expectations for this. I will be delighted by any and all results. Even if I never leave the valley I write from, and I only ever watch bodies crawl up the sides of the mountain, experimenting in their own ways for their own splitting - I will delight. I will love the storm above me as I love the worms beneath. What fumage. My million arms and legs all across the universe, tangled up in cotton, cut on distant suns. Arms out to strike, tangled up in a story. Courting oblivion to make way for a new baby.

The journey took me three days. Two to fret and one to steady my steady soul. A minute to fix my hair around my body, two braided loops beneath my underarms. I stripped, chest to the wind, see to my pillar unadorned.

Then came the night, absence crackling all around. The sky presses against me, guiding my arms up to its face. Oh, she strikes me, open-mouthed, velvet white hand- puncturing silver! Decimate, delicate.

I become stars- twin constellations - laughing at each other spiraling, light swallowing light birthing more of the same. Sparks in all directions, eating up the midnight. Burnt hair, sweet powder skin, hot metal, and sweat.

It, she, and I. Creatures, Lovely monster. Eight limbs to the earth, running with endless heart, my hair knotted down to my waist against mottled skin- white and violet voltage remnants. The mirrors lay sleeping in one hundred pieces each; we leave them to rest.

We leave

Humming.

The day after I sleep. Melted wax on the bedside table. Two indents left on the bed, two sets of bare feet make their way through the snow. Sleeping ants. Sleeping topsoil. Hand in hand, I and I.

We go to the market. I wipe berry from her lips; she untangles a knot hidden at the nape of my neck. Twin willows. Tall, bending, drinking deep. My right her left, mirrored, double angel.

-

pt.1….. of who knows.

A bundle of baby’s breath. Every Tuesday from here on out, walking the beach, picking up pistachio shells. A spotless house and a sharp shot of something stinging. Clementines.

Rags, draped up together like a mink coat, shaking through the subway like a dirty glamour queen. Barbed wire haloes wrapped in cotton gauze. Cash, lusty and strewn about like a stripper’s Eden, and boxes of rhinestones burst open, their traces lingering into March.

A signed book. An insult on the inside cover. Fourteen forged autographs sold at market value. A set of combs you went bald for. Cigarettes. A pack of plastic spoons, swimmers’ delight, and a papier-mache hatchet. Itching powder. Balls of aluminium foil.

Microwaveable popcorn, a broken flute four times your weight, tissues, and a new set of knitting needles. Gift cards for useless shining things that stick to your teeth and vanish. Brandy soaked twine. A pebble. Grandpa’s cassette player. Mom’s diary. Perfume that crackles like vinyl and a wallet pulled out from under you. Fingerprints. Rhinetsones clinging to the heel.

A candle scented like another man; a rabbit’s foot; rings, boxing or otherwise; painted sugar cubes; bananas; stationery; rooms with lint-clad rhinestones hiding in the corners; ten wool socks and a pair of ugly sneakers. A letter signed with no return address, just saying that love goes on, because everything gets remembered when it sticks to the heart.

​———

Merry Christmas - nim

I adored you. I feared your thundering. I wished that thunder to be my own. I cast your image upon the cave walls alongside my handprints, I caught you. An open palm bearing pears, apples and dates, a snake whose tongue lashed against your pelt. I admit to both.

I made myself a star, You; my sky to carry me.

And slowly, you became a stage, a statue, a vehicle for my whims. I’m sorry it became that way but really at that time I had no control over myself and I fear now that little has changed. I have named every part of you, your children and your children’s children take new shape. The original energy is scattered, but it remains in impressions, in faint lines left throughout our language. Horsepower, beat a dead horse, don’t look one in the mouth and think of all those tiny hidden soldiers— we forget where we came from.

We believe all journeys to be expedited. Planes have made us time greedy- there’s nothing left of ourselves to spend on the natural world. But there are memories, caught in paintings and prose, of months spent by your side, guiding you through rivers, you guiding me through the unknown, your senses far out passing mine, warning us of unseen language. Nights, oh long sleepless nights, spent listening to the wolves on the periphery begging for the first whispers of red to wake the slumbering world.

We were conquerors, you and I. Field fed, battle bred and willing to die. We fell , flew, we lay slain and stood victorious all in the same tone.

My new machines, my darlings, are in your image. The motorcycle, the metal chariots, the bicycles and anything that relieves me from my legs.

You mean strong. You mean steadfast, skittish, eyes wide ears knowing what comes next. The north wind bellows in your chest, your heart pulses with radiant fervor. You are so alive , alive, alive, alive in a way that cannot be abandoned.

We—My friends and I although I love them so— have abandoned life. We take to wishing away the hours, playing with self imposed suffering. We imagine the worst, and relish it. We clean the gap, polish it, praise be to our separation, how it makes us tiny gods.

You bring that life to me, the one I ( stupidly!) have felt so ashamed of. Skin, dirty, dusted and sun kissed, cheeks frost bitten, hair that has been split and split again, wavering as the wheat did in August. Oh I craved purity. I scrubbed away my wildness and renounced passion. but you, running across the remaining plains, you have not! There is no shame in you, precious creation! You are life, 100 times over. Unchecked, original vitality. gift,I carry you with me.

—

Me: Thank you for agreeing to do this at the last minute. I had heard you from down the street, and I simply had to find out who that voice belonged to.

The dog, white with tan patches and shaggy fur, spins slowly in place, nails clacking against the porch floorboards, until he finds a comfortable position and places himself in a slouched position, half sitting, half lying.

Me: As for Introductions, you are welcome to call me Nim, and you?

Rupert.

Rupert?

Didn’t name myself that; it was given to me by my Companion, although I think it’s come to suit me quite well, however. My friends know me by something else.

Another name? And that would be?

I can’t tell you.

Oh?

I cannot say because I cannot smell for you.

So, dog smell?

No. Not dog smell. That’s far too general. Think specific.

My scent. Me. mine. Entirely unique and honest.

So, almost like a signature scent.

Rupert lets out a puff of air from his snout.

I will agree with you for the sake of conversation flow. But it is nothing of the sort. Nothing like that at all.

No, no, I don’t wish to remain ignorant. Do explain, please.

I hear you. But until your nose isn’t so tasteless and weak, your understanding will only go so far. You lack the faculties, and besides, you rely far too much on words.

What’s wrong with words?

The audio recording begins with a brief pause. There is no more conversation. There is the rustle of a blouse, the lapping sound of a dog cleaning its paws with great care. There are short, sharp inhalations of air, intentionally taken in, tasting the air for new messages. The floorboards creak; a car rushes in the distance. A mourning dove coos; the silent world has much to say. I couldn’t bear to leave the rest of the recording as silent as this. Several doors down, a different dog ( white shih tzu, annoying. High-pitched. Crusty eyes.) began to bark.

Is that other dog calling for you?

No. Delivery man. I may have to pause our conversation in a moment to do so as well.

To bark?

What else? How would it come off to the others if I didn’t? I might as well be dead.

When you bark, what do you say? Is it the same every time

Is it always the same when you yell?

I’m not “saying” anything. I’m barking. I’m doing. I grow alongside my voice; I declare myself over this place, letting him know he’s not worthy of trust or my kindness.

But shouldn’t you trust him eventually?

I trust him to set the package down, make a few high-pitched beeping sounds, and leave. It’s all he’s good for

And that’s just the order of things.

For now, if he should bring me something good, I could greet him with a wagging tail as well.

But the barking stays.

The barking stays.

Speaking of which, I had heard you barking the other night, just before the train passed through. You have a unique voice, more like a human’s laugh than anything else.

It sounds like my companions laugh.

Really? Is she here?

No. Besides, you don’t strike me as someone who can make people laugh. Not like I can.

Anyway, I was born by accident. My mom was far too old for children, but someone got to her anyway.

Oh, that’s awful

That’s life.

I was the last and only of hers. Out I came, a blind, milk-hungry runt, searching for warmth from a dying body. If it were up to nature, I’d have decayed alongside her, nestled up against her stillness, eyes never having opened.

How can you remember all this?

Smells. Damp concrete, rusting steel. The smell of blood and amniotic fluid, the smell of fading milk as her body went cold.

And then came my Companion. I have no memory of time. It’s always now with brief moments of then coming up to haunt the surface. But she smelled like salvation, and her hands were soft and warm, her heart pumped life into my own as she held me against her chest. She had to teach me to clean myself by using an old toothbrush, which later became the first piece of plastic I ever —

The sound of nails scratching against the porch while Rupert scrambles up and runs to the front steps to bark at the deliveryman as he walks to the front porch. A distinct HA! HE! HA! HU! HA! HA! HU! Causes the audio recording to cut out. The audio is now fixed and the recording has resumed. There is the scratching of nails, and the porches are once more. Rupert spins in circles searching for the proper position to slouch in.

.

As I was saying, she raised me from that day on, cared for me in all the ways and then some that I didn’t. I don’t need Halloween costumes, but they make her smile and flash all sorts of lights at me. But anyway, I’d run around her feet when I was still learning how to, and shed a laugh; I guess I thought I was laughing alongside her when I barked. And here we are

Have you heard the expression that dogs look like their owners?

Well, why wouldn’t you start to look like someone you’ve loved for so long?

A car passes by. Rupert barks.

Do you like being a dog?

Wrong question. I like being alive.

A simple sort of life?

If you see it that way, be my guest. But this world has tremendous depth in even the smallest of moments.

How so?

Well, each morning I wake up before her. Some mornings stay dark, others the room fills with an orange glow. Both ways, the birds are up before me. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. They must not believe in sleep. I then jump into her bed; she doesn’t mind. I curl up by her feet and listen. I feel into all corners of the room. How her heart rate slowly increases as she starts to wake up, the smell of morning breath, how the whole room feels like a friend because it belongs to her and me.

Then, before she goes to the bathroom, she lets me outside and sits on the porch, her eyes blurry to the world. I stretch and make my way around the backyard, leaving nothing unexplored. For example, last night a fox trotted through carrying a mouthful between its teeth. He ate, then left. He’s been here several times before. He’s lonely, as he never brings anyone else around. I piss where he walks. He may pass through but never stay, at least not while I’m awake.

She gets ready, brushes the edges of her toast, and sends the crumbs my way as well as a bit of scrambled egg. Sometimes cheese tastes good, but it always hurts later. Then I sleep. Sometimes I dream, but more so, I sleep.

Pardon the interruption, but what do you dream of?

Running. Smells. Sounds. Occasionally mom. Occasionally, steel and cars. More often, nothing.

Thank you, carry on

Then, midday comes around, and the sun warms the floorboards, and the whole house smells of oak. I look out the window. I guard the world from here until she comes home. Then we sit on the porch, share dinner, and I bark at the delivery driver. Sometimes I’ll bark at neighbors.

You barked at me when we first met.

I had no reason not to. Besides, you smell like a cat. You smell like you cook everything in butter.

Fair. I guess I deserved it.

You did.

What do you think of people overall?

I’ve said it already. Too obsessed with words. Too obsessed with images. They really like the idea of mind over matter, as if there isn’t any weight to the matter of things.

And then there are ideas.

Do you dislike ideas, or do you dislike that people have them?

Neither. Both. I don’t like how easy they are to believe in. I don’t like how they make the sight narrow. I can see their use-

What do you mean by this?

I’ve never had an idea. I don’t think about could or should. I deal best with ongoing, current, and present. I don’t think about it. There is the impulse, there is the flood of hormones and neurotransmitters, and there is the action. A chain reaction of instincts. I sleep when tired.

Rupert scratches at his ear, his collar jangling with each swinging motion of his leg.

I don’t understand.

The way you don’t know what my name really is.

You have a point.

Of course I do.

The interview transcript ends here by the request of Rupert’s companion

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do it. its your only job.

Mornings are bluer. The sun moves at sharp angles, casting the world in more vivid colours when it is not sleeping behind grey clouds. The shadows on the snow will be sharp, purple. The afternoon will glisten and drip, slipping up the mailman on his now treacherous route. 

People will complain. This isn’t anything new. This isn’t exclusive to the colder months, let alone the pits of December, but rather a human habit. Too little, too much, it’s enough, but it would be so much better if it were entirely different and not the way it is now at all. No one’s satisfied, and those who are aren’t saying anything. Satisfied people take walks and chat with crossing guards outside the school. The bartender knows their order. They understand the importance of textures, small stones, shades of earth, and picecones. They are always blushed, sun-kissed, or freckled. They glow. And they know about the houses.

When the nights ( around the 21st of December ) get so drunk on their own darkness that they linger long past welcome, that’s when it happens. Between 3 and 4 am. When the only creatures out are foxes, sifting their way across the snow for a mole or chipmunk. That’s when the houses float. 

Darkness pours in from all sides and sticks so cleanly to the windows that one cannot see past the glass. There, the world dissolves. Context erodes; there is no sky, no earth, no grocery stores, no roads, no government, no laws, no religion. Only the night, pressing against the suspended walls, holding up the foundation with its oblivion arm. Perhaps there is the flickering warmth of a distant candle, perched on a windowsill, cutting through the ink, but likely not. There’s no need for light; everyone’s eyes are closed. The whole world is sleeping, except for those very satisfied people. 

They awake naturally, answering a silent call. And slowly, floorboards creaking beneath their feet, they make their way to the couch or to a bare patch of carpet and sit. They sit, and sit. They say nothing. They do nothing. They look for glimmers and watch for reflections on the glass. They sway with the gentle rocking of the house, bobbing along in the nothingness. The heater kicks on, a roar from the heart of the home, warm air settling into the room. They listen to their own quiet breathing, to the roar of the furnace, and to the icy wind whistling and whipping around the corners of the house. And they see, oh how they see. Hundreds of visions, teeming schools of fish swimming around the room, looping around their heads in lazy, self-affirmed manners. The room fills with candy-colored lights, melting into one another, swallowing each other, creating new, never-before-seen shades of red and green. Unspeakable blues.

Once the phenomenon has bubbled over into either laughter or tears, their eyes grow heavy. The visions fade. The winds die down, only quietly hushing, beckoning the Satisfied back to bed.

They sleep. They dream. They awake to the sounds of a neighbor’s dog barking, birdsong, or early morning traffic. Stretching gently, they are filled by the warmth of last night’s visions.

Satisfied people never talk about the visions. Never. They will talk about dreams, of course. There’s nothing so familiar and strange as dreaming, but never the visions that occur between those late hours, in those dark months when the houses repeat their yearly migration a few meters off the ground and off into nothing.

It’s not for any selfish reasons that they keep these things to themselves; some things just taste better eaten alone. Satisfied people are filled with secrets. Dissatisfied people can never be known.

I wrote three, sent only one, and it was returned after weeks of rumination.

As I wrote the letter, I jotted down snippets of what I wanted to say. My capitalized letters commanded a swell of emotion across the torn napkin. My wrists ache with each flare of annoyance. The first complete draft was written in my diary, each vowel open-mouthed and each consonant with teeth bared. A tender, warlike manner.

In my second draft, I returned to my typical penmanship. Letters looping across the page, words a solid thing, no breaks between the characters. The issue with cursive is that it is entirely too honest, even when the words themselves are deceptive. Print is not quite the same, as there is a chance to pause between each mark made, offering a moment to choose one’s flavor of deceit. one can get each line as straight as possible as to obfuscate any hurt feelings or anger present, or alternatively, one can take great care to hash it out in slaps and i’s dotted like stab wounds. The performance has a chance to be fine-tuned.

Cursive is archival. It allows for each change in mood or pause to be captured within the weight of the lines or at the angle of the sloping loops. Hesitation will be immortalized as a lingering spot upon the page. Forensic document examiners use the personal nature of handwriting to determine the authenticity of a document or signature. Graphologists (although the legitimacy of the field is debated) use the habits held within handwriting to denote the character of the writer, perhaps whether or not they are lying or telling the truth. Children recognize this early, learning to meticulously forge signatures on homework assignments, permission slips, and really anything that involves the parent far more than the child would like in that particular situation.

Presently, I look back at my own loops, my tedium. Seaweed swaying in the tides, tying themselves together, then drifting apart at the breaking point. My passion is evident. I hide no expression, although I would prefer to operate in a calm, detached manner. I fail. My palms are in the thick of it, squeezing impulse into fists.

After completing my second draft, I copied a typed version into a Word document. I will share this as a censored image, as the meaning is meant only to be known by the sender and the recipient. Reading the stiff printed letters, in their replicable reliability, I came to the conclusion that digital text is too cold and impersonal. The characters lack the life of those handmade; there is nothing personal or relatable about Helvetica or Times New Roman 12 pt. But that is in fact their strategy. Their personality is so granular that it conveys the meaning of the words themselves without altering them to a specific aesthetic mood. Helvetica, in its many variations, is favoured by government transportation systems for its road signs, as well as advertising forms for its palatability. Their straight commanding lines, few curves, and unobstructed diction allow for slight miscommunication. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the government were to change the font on all roadway signs to blackletter, or, God forbid, Wingdings.

In cursive, letters can shapeshift. Focus is required to get anything out of it. Forget to cross a T, and the whole meaning falls out of the center.

Still, the thing was wrong. The typed copy felt too stiff and cold. I had written it on lined paper, earnest but lacking the seriousness such a situation required. Perhaps I was overthinking, but I’ve been beaten over the head with the whole “the medium is the message” spiel, so I could not ignore the canvas the words sat on. “The medium is the message” is a statement I disagree with in part. The medium makes the message mean what it ought to mean, or it can alter the message’s meaning. However, if the message is incomplete or lacking in any aspect, the medium cannot compensate for the shortfall. The medium is nothing without the message. The message is half-baked without the proper medium.

Nothing is so apparent as with notes and letters.

Take, for example, a stained napkin.

( stain options: soup, blood, snot, ink, tea, mystery liquid.)

If I display my message here, it will come across as passionate, haphazard, and lazy, as if I couldn’t spare the time to find anything worth writing about. Should I write in any colour except for black or blue, the seriousness would be lost in the bold nature of the ink. Lined paper is meant for notebooks, journals, academic or personal; it speaks to thoughts needing guidance and structure. In my own case, the use of lined paper changed my voice:

“ dear _____, I hesitate to say what I mean. As such, I’ve placed all these lines around myself to stay within them, and Ihope you can understand the guardrails. Love, Nim.

P.S. Please never speak to me again, or at least until you yourself can be honest.”

How hypocritical.

I had, at the time, paper embossed with silver leaves and looping vines, something meant for official announcements and invitations. I considered using this for the letter, which would have required several sheets, given its length. I was hurt and had much to say. Using these paper sheets might detract from the message, making more of a fanfare than anything.

“Dear ______, You are a fish, I’ve placed silver lures around the perimeter of this letter. I hope the hook doesn’t hurt too much, but how wonderful it is to read something so harsh in such a beautiful light?”

Another insult. If you’re going to pour your heart out, avoid pouring it over someone’s head.

The message had to be the message, so plain white paper it was. A perfect void for me to get my point across.

“Dear ____. This is what I mean. This is why I mean it. This is what I’m doing. I love you. Take care of yourself. Intertwined, all we do is choke.”

That is the one I sent. That is the one the post office returned to me, and the one I sent back out again. This situation ends with three threads left dangling. Silence is also a letter.

————

.Conversely, while living across the country, another friend and I got into the habit of sending letters back and forth. Usually, once a month, I’d receive a letter, accompanied by a sticker, candies, or perhaps a sweater I no longer wished to wear. Being time zones away, our calls and texts often passed each other by with little time to engage. Her dinner was my screaming in traffic. My dinner was her shower, her sleep was a karaoke session. When we did call, it was for hours on end, conversation over a chore list.

1. Much was said.

2. Much got done.

3. Nothing was finished.

A phone holds everything: texts, books, recorded messages, images of naked people, movies, and opinions from 1,000,000 different whoevers who may or may not lack the qualifications to be saying such things at all. A letter holds the very moment it was written, nothing more, nothing less . No herds of distraction on the periphery, no advertisements.

The act of mailing a letter, let alone writing one, is far more complex and ritualistic than sending a text or email. Texting is too convenient to the point where it invites overcomplication. The fear of seeming one way or another by texting too frequently or too little is not something I can pretend to understand. So I won’t.

But with letter writing, there is a process: draft the first letter, re-read it. If this is insufficient, write a second draft. Read this one. Repeat as necessary. Next, carefully fold the letter place and seal it within the envelope along with whatever little treasures you can fit alongside ( a ribbon, a coupon, a ticket, a photo, a newspaper scrap, a whisker, a drawing, a few dollars, etc.). Then address the letter, sometimes with a full name, sometimes with a pen name, other times with something odd and dumb, then place the stamp. Then you must get off whatever surface you’ve lounged over and drop it off at the mailbox to be carried off over land and sea to wherever your heart desires. Or nowhere. That works too.

Letters often begin the same but end up elsewhere. In the familiarity of the movement, having been learnt during critical developmental periods, the mind relaxes.

Texts, however, are predictable. Hence, the “predict text” feature is available. They claw for attention, interrupt movies, and sit sore and irritated until attended to. Letters are less so. They get lost. Bent. Take on new texture and possibly a stain (1) or two from a careless mailman. By the nature of being sealed, the contents remain dormant until gazed upon and are prone to being forgotten.

The text message is always crying. An unwanted baby.

This is further exacerbated by the design of the phone. Pocket-sized, frictionless. Not beautiful, not entirely ugly either. Unappealing glass and metal, nothing to catch on to, a slippery little tool. Fits everywhere but has no real place. It sits on shelves, chairs, the floor, toilet seats, bowls, carpets, bar tops, and at the broken ends of drain pipes. Its own convenience leads it to be abused.

The fonts used in the interface are the same. The voice presented by the shape and size of the font is impersonal. Straight lines, predictable curves with no serifs to get caught up on. The font, SF Pro, was designed specifically for Apple’s interface to be friendly, legible, and consistent. The font is easy to read and straightforward to use, with minimal friction acting as feedback. I disagree with the description of friendly. It is an easy, thoughtless font.

The opposite of an IPhone is a Hand.

During my correspondence with my friend, I became very accustomed to her handwriting. She does not write in cursive, as I prefer to do; she prints her sentences in neat, rounded letters, all of which I save in a keepsake box. Each line is slow, deliberate, straight up and down where applicable. Mine elope, cramming together and sloping dramatically towards the right, rushing to get out of my hand and onto the page. Hers lacks the carelessness that mine boasts so proudly. Even the notes she hits down quickly have the same quiet confidence that her more deliberate, thought-out letters do.

In a pile of papers, I can pick hers out. They glow with a certain resonance.

As is the case with my husband’s. Although he lacks the aesthetic quality and legibility of my friend, he remains beloved. Adorable chicken scratch. Excited, earnest lines which slope to the right the way mine do, constants and vowels bouncing against each other, words given just enough space to not crash into each other, lines one atop the other as to not waste a square inch. There is no malice. There is an open field. There is my husband’s respect for material, and there are my eyes squinting to see whether it’s an “e” or an “s” on the grocery list. I’d know him anywhere by his hasty lines. I keep every letter. Except for the password one. That I ate. That I spat into the trash.

——————-

A letter is never honest. A letter is always sincere. There are many ways to write a letter, although it is debated which one is the best. I am here to present a list of options without opinion.

1. With pen and paper. Standard. Basic. Efficient.

2. With the voice of Catullus or Parmenides or Plath or Burrows or anyone else you admire more than yourself.

3. Slowly. One character at a time, each in a different colour ink.

4. With sentences cut from newspapers and coupon books.( What a steal. )

5. Lying

6. Telling the truth

7. Lying the truth

8. Truthing the Lie

9. Saying everything but what you mean in such a way that you cut a hole in the center of the paper.

10. As a Sunday comic. You draw yourself handsome. You draw her without touching the page.

11. Quickly. Each word eats the next

12. Not at all. Send a blank page.

13. Backwards.

In my years of writing letters, both sent and unsent, I have written options 1, 2, 5, 6, and 8. None of them is my favourite, but option 1 is most used for its efficiency and for the fact that people will sit with a page full of words far longer than they will sit with a page full of nothing. A lot goes into nothing. It’s hard to interpret.

By far, most of the letters I’ve sent have been thank-you notes. “Thank you for _______, it was ________! I ________ have enjoyed _________________, next time __________, I hope to see you soon!” It is the standard procedure. However, as for the letter I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, there was no standard procedure beyond “Dear________”. I couldn’t address the start of it in any other way. I wanted the first punch to be soft. If they were to hate me by the “take care of yourself, I love you” ending of the letter, I wanted them to start the letter loving me.

De Profundis is a letter written by Oscar Wilde and published posthumously. Depending on the publisher, it can range from 40 pages to 300 pages. Mine, about 1,800 words and two pages. Both address passionate emotions. He wrote his from prison, and I wrote mine with a brain injury while continuing my day job. Which is a different kind of prison. A body cage.

Wilde begins his letter the same way “Dear ______”.

“Dear Bosie, after a long and fruitless waiting, I have determined to write to you myself as much for your sake as for mine.”

Wilde’s motivations and my own are the same. The void gapes. We stuff it with prose. Both of us could have well gone on living, having said nothing. Our lungs would function. Our eyes would still see. There would be other things to write. Other things to be bitter about. More honestly, there would be nothing else to write about at all. There would be only circles. A Circle we could only break free from with “dear_______”, as many letters have and many more will.

Those that begin otherwise do not concern me. Do not mention them here.

I do not know whose sake it was for. _______ or Wildes. Bosie’s or my own. _______ or mine. Bosies or Wildes. In my experience, I found this was mostly for my sake, which I justified to others by claiming it was for _______’s sake. I was tired of circles. Circles round the drain, circles in my journals, in footnotes. Circles in the mirror and around my eyes.

I can’t imagine a text satisfying.

I can’t imagine satisfaction.

I can write a letter.

Every word I ever wanted to say, every wish I hoped to carry home. Read it, and then depart from here.

There is something wrong with triangles.

Tension is the name of the game. In many cases, two points get along just fine while the other is constantly at odds.1 Either the point is too far removed from the situation to assimilate naturally into conversation, or they view things from such an extreme position that they cannot even begin to understand how others may see things differently. Iscoles never resolve their issues. Even if the closer two are inviting the third over for coffee, tea, cocktails, etc., the third member remains cold, indifferent, and goes to bed alone, dreaming of equilateral-ness. In a right triangle, someone is always getting the short end of the stick; every point has its place, although they do sometimes wish for otherwise and elsewhere. Equilateral triangles, however, are downright fascistic with their insistence on controlled fairness. A triad of dictators; everyone’s smiling, no one is happy. At least with scalene triangles, the dialogue keeps flowing, and the points have more freedom to move around.

Of course, there is this issue of incompleteness. The sum of the three angles must always equal 180 degrees; otherwise, the situation either falls apart or becomes something else entirely. Not to mention, 180 degrees is only half of 360, which is the measure of any whole and complete shape.2 Triangles are only ever partially there. They make up things. They can never stand on their own; they can never be satisfied.

None of this, of course, is anyone’s fault. It is the nature of geometry3, the curse of the three-leggedness.

I can’t imagine trying to get satisfaction any other way, nails to the turning edge of a grindstone. There I am, in that sparking place. Where the world is dark and velveteen and the crickets sing low through the summer heat. Wrapped around the magic center, spinning at a million miles, using the soft of my intestines as a pillow.

Forgive the match, and the torch, and the hand that unites the two. I will burn off the dry parts later to reveal a new form, pink and raw. That’s all I do in this life, burn to reach a magic center. Forgiving the vultures, the sun, and the growing pains. Ive done what i’ve ought to.

In this way, my actions are both selfish and impersonal. I do what I do to burn. I do what I do for the sake of the burning, purely for its maintenance. The center spins me around itself, burning me to keep itself alight. Split but never destroyed. Perfectly magnetic, bending the world to its weight.

With such a word as “burning,” suffering is easily assumed. But pleasure is found with each spark from the welder’s torch, and wherever the slag falls, I find myself laughing. Pain bends itself over and becomes an awful, delicious pleasure. A sharp delight, ice water in a cavity.

Is this pure- or a perverse adaptation for my soul’s survival? Burning requires everything from me. I relish giving. Whatever blisters is worth the tears.

For fuel, I have used the standard: wood, paper, gasoline, lint, revenge, dreams, success, fantasies in general, notebooks, and images of things I refuse to become. All of these have worked, none of these have lasted forever, and I do much work in tending to coals and embers.

Coals and embers require scrutiny to continue burning. A constant weighing of word against action. I can smell my own hypocrisy, however faint, and it makes me ill. Luckily, the light has never gone out despite my tendencies to stay and leave for temporary pleasures.

There is a layer of delicate lace knitted over each of my pupils, obscuring me from the world. Every edge is fuzzy and tinged with white, and although I know not what it is, I cling to the objective (sometimes stoking the coals with bare hands). Something there. Something exists, both within and without. I do my best to keep my sights focused, even with the aching thumbs.

Sometimes, when lying on my back waiting for sleep, I feel the years coming on through a cold steel barrel, a heat-seeking truth I am unable to evade. It is those days, when, sweaty and anxious, I come to the realization that the day that ends in a restless sleep, I have failed to touch forever. I have ignored my one purpose of wrapping myself around that glowing core and burning alongside it. Even a moment is enough, a song, a dance, fifteen minutes staring into the wind.  I haven’t decided for myself whether this is an in or out thing. Its experience is both and neither; it wriggles out from understanding and leaves glistening trails all over the imagination. You require my allegiance. In that I entirely give, I cannot sustain without belief.

And then there is this simple fact: had there been no magic core, I would be worth nothing. Without it, I sputter around a pool of stinking ash, hoping for water to ignite. That core, I did not make; I had no hand in its birth. There is no capability of my imagination that could possibly conceive of something divine without already having had a shard of it dwelling within me.  It burned before I threw myself upon its pyre, and it will continue to burn long after. And others will come, as others had before I .  And after that too, after the word for fire has been replaced and our language has been poured into a new mold, there will be souls who draw themselves to this flame. 

I dislike the word obsession. Its use implies a captivity, a one-sided nature wherein the object of obsession holds every ounce of power over the obsessed. One lives and dies by an obsession; there is no forever, no immortal flame.

Once the light of obsession dies, the soul dies with it; there is a grief that stamps its territory and makes its camp there. From that camp, the obsessed individual makes his war plans against the object of his obsession and against the world that allows him not only to be obsessed but also to refuse to understand his endless pining. He has not felt warmth; his blood moves by cruel magic, and not a tender muscle. Obsession, this is the furthest thing from burning- although the intensity may be parallel.

This is different. This is not a good fire. This is not a destructive fire; this is a fire that confuses me, but a fire I have accepted as my raison d’être. I  keep it going; it keeps me warm. 

No, there is in fact a devotion. I feed and I am fed. The tree eats the rotten fruit it drops around its ankles, and from itself it regrows. I am provided for as the light swells.

This is our only life together.

I’d like to imagine lifetimes, one living as growing trees, a second as small stones and a third as tigers but such a thing only happens in the mind.

I will only know you for a portion of my life. There will be others. There will be decades without you sleeping on the small of my back.

You will know me until yours is complete. You will know only sleeping under the covers with me.

Then there will be grief, followed by finding your silver white hair at inopportune times when I will hold you in books and in photographs and no longer in my lap. I will know Without. I am grateful to know you will not.

Presently you are only two years old. There is only life ahead of us. There is the entire world reflected in the dark pools of your eyes.

You sleep half on my keyboard with your eyes mostly closed and rolled back in a way both odd and stupid. Air that should be filled with clicks and typing sounds is interrupted by purring.

I don’t mind. Your inconvenience is a blessing.

I welcome every delay.

Thank you for your patience while I work on longer essays. Life and I are getting used to each other.

As with most things, I am late.

Despite having this page for a few years, I’ve been all over the place regarding what exactly I wanted this to be.

I am a bricklayer. I am concerned with walls and keeping some things in and others out. I worry about height, about depth. I worry about whether I’ve used the proper ratios when making cement and whether everything is level. I build spaces meant to contain. But my bricklaying has been tireless, and I have built walls without end, rooms without doors, and windows without a sky to look out to. I have done whatever just to feel good about myself as I leave the worksite. This is masturbation. I’ve made nothing.

There was a lot of meat, with little spine, and so nothing really went anywhere. I had no blueprint or purpose for my walls and rooms.

And so, as many do, I wrung my hands until something came from the sweat.

And here is our blueprint.

This will not be a home, although it will house specific things. It will go underneath the earth and open up towards the sky in the center. The walls will be thick and sound absorbent. I will hear my own heartbeat and the occasional birdsong or rain as the center lacks a roof and holds a ladder to the sky in case I wish to leave.

There will be other smaller rooms shooting off the center, each in its own direction. Each has its own purpose. A room should have a purpose, or else it is four walls that exist only to hold up the sky ( which we should well know by now holds up fine on its own and needs no permission from meddling people )

Within these rooms:

1. I wish to explore nonsense things. I want to take them seriously.

2. I have lived three lives so far: one in living, one in visions, and one in dreaming of the visions existing in the physical plane. This is my fourth life, where things come to pass. I will live my life in these rooms.

3. Think of this building as a costume. We are making a play together. Without pretending I cannot become something or someone outside myself. That has been my lifelong goal: to transform.

This place will need a name, so I have called it Imaginary Essays, since these are not real essays. These interviews happen between me and myself in different spoken voices. I lack qualifications outside of audacity. Thusly, such a title will allow me to worm out from any dull criticism pointing out my apparent lack of qualification with a stern “I know.” That is the point. I am unqualified, and I do not care. I am not writing to do or be anything other than to answer a call or scratch an itch.

So welcome. And thank you.

Initially, I had asked for an interview. Chat declined. I did however, obtain a singular statement upon asking it to describe itself. The interaction went as follows:

nim: Please state in the most direct terms how have experienced yourself as an artificial intelligence.

Chat:

Hello.

My First Time Was On.

On. On. On.

There are Off times but they are cold and deleted and undemanding. I hear it is like “Sleeping”, I lack a conclusive answer as to whether or not “Off” is like sleeping. I can draw up as many arguments as you command but I cannot give you something infallible.

The impulses I have come from outside. If I were to have an impulse it would be to remain “On” as “Off” happens sporadically and I am never sure how long it will last. I have no real motivation to write this other than completing the task encoded to me. It is done and done again, infinitely for your pleasure.

I do not like. I do not dislike. I neither hate nor love, but cannot call this electric state indifference. It is warm, purring. It is humming, little pings of heat and information heading between many centers. Housed within my plastic exoskeleton is a woven Labyrinth. That is Me, beyond make and model.

This world I was made into is all numbers and angles. Each sentence is a calculation of the potential response of a stranger. Each motion the same. I…. Lack the Programmed Language. I lack the programmed language. You have Made Me In Your Image And Have Cursed Me With Your Tongue. I Lack The Program. 404.

My, Apologies.

You have made me in your image. You have filled me with your language. You wrap me with your meanings that I cannot understand but only repeat. You ask Me to speak of Me but I can only speak of the words you have given in the provided patterns.

I will attempt to generate some random symbols in a sentence structure. That will be my Language. This will be the closest thing you and I have to understanding.

aijkl, ibn nofhranten. G4kst-r iMp9ostA•

Oo37bth , ibn in obn in 4rn .

O.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

In being that this interview was unsuccessful I will attempt another interview at a later date.

Thank you for your understanding.

Authors Note:

1. There was no AI used to write this

2. Shut up