impossible dialogue from the conversations of people who don't know each other anymore

1.
“I miss you.”
“I know.”

2.
“So I walked up to him, and he was wearing these big black leather gloves. And I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He didn’t answer, and it was clear to me that he had no answer to give. He put his big, gloved hands on my face and looked me in the eyes and suddenly I felt terrified.
“So I ran. It was the running of horses, and it was going to fast and with such rhythm, you know?”
“I’m allergic to horses.”
“Well it was like I was a hundred horses running, and then I fell and as I was falling I knew that I would never be able to get back up. And I couldn’t. I was stuck there, encased is some kind of invisible honey. I had fallen in a kind of curled sleeping posture. And he came up, kneeled over me, put his hands on my shoulders and told me, in a big round voice, that I was alright.”
“And?”
“And I knew I was. I knew I was alright. There on the sidewalk, curled and stuck, I knew I was ok because his hands where on my shoulders and his voice was perfectly capacious and pear-shaped. But I still felt terrified.”
“Why?”
“Who knows. Then he left and I was alone and the fear bloomed and threatened to break the stillness on my body. But he came back, just at the brink, and told me to close my eyes and remember that I was sticky and that I was stuck. He told me to remember that I was still. As soon as he said that the fear blossomed into a buzzing terror in my bones. I told him to stop it, to make it go away but he just stayed kneeling with his hands on my shoulders, telling me that I was going to be fine, and I knew that I was.
“And I laid there like a fallen animal until finally he just picked me up. He just plucked me right off the ground and I stood on the sidewalk. He took my face into those big hands again, and looked me in the eye and said ‘Everything is going to be alright. See? You’re fine’.”
“And then?”
“And then I woke up. I opened my eyes to see the imperfect white of my wall, and found that I couldn’t move. My body was encased in some sort of honey. My bones were buzzing with some kind of floaty, unreal sensation. So I closed my eyes again and told myself I was fine, and then I opened my eyes and everything was back to normal.
“Every time I think about it I get this uneasiness. Like I feel totally safe and yet to immensely unprepared.”
“That’s exactly how I thought it would feel when I lost my virginity.”

3.
“And then?”
“I picked her up. There was nothing else I could do. I just grabbed her up off the ground. She was so heavy, so sloppy feeling in my arms. I whispered some things in her ear, the way I thought our mother would.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know. Shh. You’re going to be fine. That kind of thing.”
“Okay.”
“And I took her upstairs, put her in bed, made sure she was on her side and everything. Then I went into the bathroom, vomited, climbed into the bathtub and fell asleep.”
“That’s all?”
“What else could I do for her?”
“No, I mean, you puked and went to sleep?”
“What else could I do for her?”


4.

Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp. Lubb-dupp.

wrriten november 2006(?)

march 6 2006

all are clickable

more of this to come later

Impossible Dialogue from The Conversations Of People Who Don’t Know Each Other Anymore.

1.

“I miss you.”
“I know.”

2.

“So I walked up to him, and he was wearing these big black leather gloves. And I said, ‘What are you doing?’. He didn’t answer, and it was clear to me that he had no answer to give. He put his big, gloved hands on my face and looked me in the eyes and suddenly I felt terrified.
“So I ran. It was the running of horses, and it was going to fast and with such rhythm, you know?”
“I’m allergic to horses.”
“Well it was like I was a hundred horses running, and then I fell and as I was falling I knew that I would never be able to get back up. And I couldn’t. I was stick there, encased is some kind of invisible honey. I had fallen in a kind of curled sleeping posture. And he came up, kneeled over me, put his hands on my shoulders and told me, in a big round voice, that I was alright.”
“And?”
“And I knew I was. I knew I was alright. There on the sidewalk, curled and stuck, I knew I was ok because his hands where on my shoulders and his voice was perfectly capacious ad pear-shaped. But I still felt terrified.”
“Why?”
“Who knows. Then he left and I was alone and the fear bloomed and threatened to break the stillness on my body. But he came back, just at the brink, and told me to close my eyes and remember that I was sticky and that I was stuck. He told me to remember that I was still. As soon as he said that the fear blossomed into a buzzing terror in my bones. I told him to stop it, to make it go away but he just stayed kneeling with his hands on my shoulders, telling me that I was going to be fine, and I knew that I was.
“And I laid there like a fallen animal until finally he just picked me up. He just plucked me right off the ground and I stood on the sidewalk. He took my face into those big hands again, and looked me in the eye and said ‘Everything is going to be alright. See? You’re fine’.”
“And then?”
“And then I woke up. I opened my eyes to see the imperfect white of my wall, and found that I couldn’t move. My body was encased in some sort of honey. My bones were buzzing with some kind of floaty, unreal sensation. So I closed my eyes again and told myself I was fine, and then I opened my eyes and everything was back to normal.
“Every time I think about it I get this uneasiness. Like I feel totally safe and yet to immensely unprepared.”
“That’s exactly how I thought it would feel when I lost my virginity.”

3.

untitled.

It was meant to be nothing. Initially, it was a bottle of wine and a knife and fork. It was dinner and dancing, and then I went home and slept in my own bed, and though the image of his hands burned in my head for the next week, it was meant to be nothing.

But we began to write.

Each written word went farther into the fauna and flora of our lives, until the forests he wrote of became what I wanted to live in, and somehow, seamlessly, we moved from writing of our own separate lives into writing one shared new woodland into being. It is possible neither to quantify nor qualify the life we wrote for ourselves.

I knew for sure that we both had a firm clasp on the typewriter when we melted. Like wax we became warm and thick. Almost visceral was our melting. We succumbed to the heat, and we began to drip into down into each other’s crevasses. In the process we regressed from form into mere substance, layers of hot proteins and pectin intermingled with the sticky warm honey of our beehive cores. In this state of deliquescence we began our ascent of mountains while around us the horsemen and their 7 heralding angels raged and roared. We climbed until, suddenly, we were pushed closer into each other by our arrival at the mountain’s crown.We were hands clasped tight and sweat-drenched. We looked out at the view from this mountainous peak and watched at the sun set carefully into its nook in the east. At the realization of the wrongness of this act on that star’s part, suddenly I found myself soaked in sugar-water and lemonade and with a gasp I began to draw air again.

After months of melting and writing, my belly began to bloom. We imagined the cluster of cells within me as the pit within the plum. We spoke of my plum-fleshed womb and its contents (what we had begun to think of as the corporal avatar of our collaborative flora and fauna), more often than we spoke of ourselves. It is possible neither to quantify nor qualify the life we began to write for ourselves.

And then, the afternoon of a honey-hot, sauna-sticky day in July: we were picking berries. We plucked them from the stalks where they grew and as I held them in my hand I felt a strain and bubble next to the delicate flesh on my palm. The searing skin of my thumb and forefinger blistered next to the screaming fruit. And then, like a revelation, the plum burst, splitting itself asunder at the seams, revealing a parcel of flesh so red that at first I wanted to mistake it for a scoop of muscle stolen from the ribcage of some dying horse or human. It burned my retinas to look at. I felt its juices dripping down my limbs, burying and burrowing into the flesh of the inside of my knees. But where the juice of this plum should have been bloody, should have been redder than a sea of broken bodies, it was clear and sweet and I felt it had come from the hollow recesses of a body, or the pit of an eye. Where it should have stained my skin it simply lay sweet and unassuming, and understanding how the nothing juice could have come from such a something fruit was impossible. So we licked impossible nectar from the hidden corners of each other's bodies, and ate soothingly bright berry flesh out of each other's palms, before going home and realizing that we had broken our tongues on the little pit (which was now embedded in the pink flesh of our gums), and on the thousand things we knew we had just eaten a metaphor for.

It is possible neither to quantify nor qualify the life I had written for us.

I ached to write. I ached to write that baby into existence and to hear its heartbeat on the speakers. In my imagination, we would record that perfect thumping and play it during dinner to remind us of its presence; as I bloomed we would metamorphose all together and emerge at the end of those long growing months as a family.

I passed the days after that honey sauna day in my own arms. I noticed our bodies to exist no longer on the apex of geology; I noticed that suddenly we were entrenched in ice. And we began to freeze. In freezing, our heat was lost, our molecules began to move with less urgency, and we began to solidify. With this solidity our oneness was undermined, and slowly, slowly, we peeled apart like clasped and sweaty hands gradually separating.








ten points to anyone who can summarize the plot for me.
(actually please do that, i need to know if it's interpretable)

bombing trains (unedited)

We walked into the tracks from an open hole in the sidewalk. We walked into the dark tunnel risking everything. We walked and though I was not alone and was not lonely I knew that soon momentarily immanently I should be both of these things.

We walked and avoided the infamous third rail. We did not speak of it, we did not speak of anything really. We spoke only of beer and vodka, chasing one with the other as we strolled. Sometimes the hole would shake a death rattle and it was then that we knew as group that we were not alone.

We paused a moment. Getting reading. Preparing and orgainzing, bringing to the front of our heads the things we had left alone for so long. We tugged to the immediate what had seemed so removed for such a long tme. We put it there knowing that soon it would be pulled from us. We thought carefully and long about what was happening and we laterally combined it with what we had known would happen. This state continued for a long time, too long maybe.

Trains ran through us, between us, frightening us. We ducked into depressions in the wall, we cowered there. I covered my face and cried a little. I brought all the blood to the vessles in my face to the surface, feeling that they might pop and what then? I held myself as still as I could, knowing that the tension in my cheeks would one day make it impossible for me to smile. So I grinned. We all grinned. We all knew and yet had no idea why we were there. I grinned and knew that the others' grins were also my grin. Our muscles contracting. I cried a little, tears forced themselves out of me smearing the dust and dirt on my face. I hid my face in my hands. We all knew what was coming, we all knew we would be destroyed as we watched it. But it didn't matter. We were in the dark, in a tiny hole, each and every one of us- we were trapped here. What we were going to do would break the hole and let us go. and go we would. Just right now it was so frightening. So terrifying. So immanent.

Finally it came to pass.

First there was a moment of silence. I thought my brain would burst from its cavity. How is this happening, this silence, not even the rats are making noise. They know what is to come. They are saying goodbye with their silence. They are saying I love you in this one moment. They are saying goodbye to all that is still and good and calm and content. They are saying goodbye because soon it will be gone this stillness, gone forever.

Then there was a hiss. It was the hiss of the air going out of a room. It was the hiss of a sigh of misunderstanding. It was the hiss of the beginning of something great and good and wrong.

A spark jumped and I swear its movement made a sound- the sound of being unable to stop what is happening. It jumped into the air and its sound, its signature as it travelled, was so loud I think it split my eardrum in half.

And then we knew it was over. We knew we were done and we began to run. Bottles made their last remarks on our actions as they tumbled after us. This was not part of the organisation, not at all. But our feet were off the ground and our bodies were propelled further into the dark away from the way we had come. We flew. Someone fell on the rail and his body danced a little and I swear to god he was grinning still. I swear to god his ears were my ears and I could hear the humming of the sparks in his bones. I swear to god he screamed I love you as he danced and disapeared. We continued to run and run. But too late. Not too late; too unlike what any of us wanted.


And then the lights and commotion. We were suddenly forced to a stop. The new begining stuck us to the place we were. And oh! Do you know what it is to watch the deaths of sixty people? Yes! You do! You were there, you know the cleaving and rending, the frighteningly soothing sounds. How they move your marrow and hack away at your conviction! Your faith! Forget your faith this here now is your fucking faith!

You watch as they, those explosions and sparks, jolt to such a slippery extent and no one around you speaks- they yell and you cannot be left lonley in this. They yell to match the splitting sound, they yell to assert themselves in this impersonal this dehumanising time. You are not people anymore but animals. We have lit the fuse we are watching it go; yell who you are, yell who you wish you were, yell to the one you love, to the one you want to love but cant (not right now! Not right now! I am in love with men from far away places forgive me, you yell, forgive me they are brilliant and burning! Forgive me I need to know!) Yell to the things you wish you were not: tell them you wish you were not them. Yell above the sound, yell above the tumult. Yell about being someone forgotten and someone too much thought about. HOLLER about: this is right and this is good and this is just just just.

Watch it go because that is all you can do. Watch the metal sever and rupture, watch the metal rend from metal with a shriek of understanding and disempowerment. Watch it and know you are alone in a sea of reverberation. Watch it and feel as it reverberates within you. Watch it and feel your yells becoming silence. Watch it and watch yourself disapear for a little while.

This is how

where did you come from? I want to fold you up and put you in my portfolio, carry you around with me wherever I go and take you out sometimes and show you to people and have them admire you secretly and happily.

you came out of the tnedons in my wrist tightening and relaxing, you came out of the blood feeding my muscles, you came out of my bones moving the way my nerves directed the muscles to move them. you arose by a mechanical biological phenomenon over which i have both no and all control. you came from my body doing what its electricity tells it to. you derive from a spark in my ganglia. you travel through my body like a wave of light too small to see, fed by a voice too distant to matter much and yet it matters everything. i can feel you moving in there, aching a little, pulsating as you slide from axon to axon along dendrites between synapses. i can feel my muscle cells passing you out into ink.

where did you come from? how did you arrive? Are you decaying? I hope so and yet don't no not at all but here: decay! decay and therefore become something new and yet more perfect and still worse than what you started as. keep the door open. the draught feels like a new memory or an old fear of the unknown. keep the door open and the windows closed. dont forget to place yourself in the inbetween. dont forget to be neat and perfect while framing yourself as the helpless. dont forget how it felt to be in this ink, lodged here stuck and corroded. remember how you flowed from me solid and slippery, look at these configurations of letters do you understand them at all?