Essences And Sentences

Can one create a simulacrum of free will?

No.

Free will is free will. It is either free, or it is not even will.

Free will, by itself, is sturdy. It is nascent. It is art. It is warrant. It is a block of thought and water baked into a brick of prose.

Think of this as a grape. Bursting, as Keats described, on your palate.

In, of all places, an ode to melancholy.

Then ask yourself: what sort of life have I led?

Writing is strangest when it moves through the eyes seeing the world for the first time. This is why I employ black to promote the power of red. Why sorcery overrides the dictates of logic. Why perceptions shine on the page. Why gauze is sometimes in fashion, and sometimes it is not.

We feel trapped in our own ideas. Dew beaded on the fronds of a fern, the gleam of rails in a train station.

Ink is a medium of the intellect. It is a fluid. It is sometimes black, sometimes blue. Its viscosity allows for expression. But it dries instantly. Allowing for durability. For pipes and canoes and the beckoning of the wilderness.

Pull a shape out of a chair, and you still have a chair. Essence is a sensation. I feel a surge of joy at the very idea of pi.

Europe, on the other hand, is accomplished by thinking. Lips flap, words fly. Spain is described as a luminous feeling. France is described as a story of bulbs and burgundy. England is described as Jimi Hendrix playing Voodoo Child on the Lulu Show.

I wear a mask of turbulent steam not to dissimulate, but to simulate the simmering of galaxies scribbled into space.

Like rattan. Talking fills the vineyards of autumn.

My friend, who are you?

This is my new metaphor: bone. Each personal history has a certain weight. Water reflects the vagaries of thought, and reverie, which is a soft light, a loaf of bread, and a squirrel. Everything of value stems from diversion.

For instance, I love the sound of rain. You can find everything in it. Everything and nothing. Definitions always fall short.

Avoid politics. Consciousness is fueled by amazement. A flight of steps embowered by sycamore.

Forgive me if my fingers infringe on the beatitude of your knees. The clarinet is a parable of valves. Listen to the robins. The world is accelerated by foment. Ronnie Wood in a beet field painting the sky. Braque, accompanied by Apollinaire, meeting Picasso for the first time. The physics of walking. The hardware of talking.

Distill a participle into a jar of pickles. Consider this an elegy of glass. Surly women. The smell of sex.

Les Demoiselles D’Avignon.

Is there a force strong enough to stop war? Such is my vision. My movements are telegraphic. A coherent incoherence. And so we danced all night. And the war came to an end. In our minds.

This is my knife. Watch as I hurl it. Watch as it bounces down the street. Clink, clink, clink.

No allegory is complete without a winner. Which is why a fight broke out at last night’s bingo game.

Fog argues with oak. Coalescence is a meridian in the rhapsody of a stump.

Each road is a mental adventure. A memory of silver. A thermometer registering the absurdity of winter’s temperatures.

It is astonishing how crude, vulgar, violent, and materialistic life in the U.S. has become.

The metamorphosis of thought is dramatized by tin.

Or a sweet and bubbly strain of music.

A squirrel sitting on a rock eating a peanut.

Our emotions are faster than pianos. Each river has two shores. The Beatle’s Revolver plays in a '94 Subaru.

In 2010. And nothing has changed. Except everything. Which was books. And ghosts. And words employed in melody.

Certain things cannot be denied. Especially cemeteries.

I find it strange that no one comments on these things.

I cannot give you a good reason as to why I write. But here is a sentence swarming with shrimp, and here is a polymer in the creation of a protein.

Here is a freshly squeezed Philippine sponge, dripping.

Here is a private thought. It’s invisible.

Except on paper, where it ceases to be private, and becomes a passion. An explanation. For the need of decoration. Ornaments and lies. And the little irritations that fill a day. Make it what it is. Or was meant to be.

A circumference. A farm. A declaration of freedom.

I am but a humble piece of meat, studying the curls of your hair.

What can a goldfish tell us of reality? Are we truly the inheritors of something sublime? Or merely deluded?

I cannot help but notice that our planet is dying. Even the dinosaurs weren’t this savage. They merely left a legacy of bones. Imprints and shells.

What will we leave behind?

Ideas of free will? How will they take shape? What form? What essence? What value?

Spars, whispers, paths. All of it gone. Gas stations included.