Herds of Diamond Centipede

These questions, “what do I want,” “what is it possible to want,” and “what am I” compared reveal my relation with the universe. Right now what I want is a rocking chair, a bag of earth, and the language of rocks delivered into my bloodstream intravenously. Because if I speak like a rock with the needs and desires of a rock I will arrive at the geometry of faucets in which answers evince kilowatts of personality and a knot is a knot is knot. That is to say, a convolution of rope, which smells of the waterfront. If I follow the logic of rope, I will change tenses when it suits me and signify texture with my bones and cackling scraps of consciousness littered here and there like words. Like the glamorous shine of a terra-cotta caboose.

It follows, then, that blood and bone offer imponderable moments of meaning. In this state, the best of ideas which can be come to me in on the backs of lurid creatures blasted into lavish definition by the candy of enigma. I have often thrilled to the splendor of hardware. I can be sincere as an armadillo or ironic as a cat. I can include a conundrum of bone. I can wish for sanctity and redemption. I can hope for bowling. Asparagus. A freshly mown lawn. And yet I do not like asparagus and I own no lawn. What I am this moment is determined by intrigue and the contour and texture of time, which is 9:09 a.m., and time for breakfast.

I make scrambled eggs and toast slathered with cherry raspberry rhubarb jam and watch the news. Thirty-one hikers were feared dead near the peak of a volcano in a mountainous region west of Tokyo, Japan. The eruption was a complete surprise. There had been weeks of minor earthquakes but nothing that seismologists had interpreted as a warning of a major event. The release of toxic gases made it impossible to bring the corpses down. Ash covered everything. The volcano continued to spew billows of smoke. Military helicopters, negotiating the ash and smoke, were able to rescue a few more survivors on the volcano’s slopes. More hikers awaited rescue in shelters.

George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin exchanged vows in an intimate ceremony at the Aman Canal Grande luxury resort in Venice, Italy. They were married by the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. Following the ceremony, a dinner reception offered lemon risotto with lobster, lemon ricotta agnolotti with arugula pesto, and Chianina beef with porcini mushrooms.  

New Zealand scientists examined a giant squid weighing 770 pounds with tentacles like fire hoses and eyes like dinner plates.

A Chinese restaurant owner in New York City was arrested after allegedly lacing dishes with opium in an effort to keep customers coming back.

U.S. forces launched air strikes on territory controlled by Islamic State (Isis) in northern and eastern Syria. This included a gas plant outside Deir al-Zor and another in Homs that provided several provinces with electricity and powers oil field generators.

Another airstrike on mills and grain storage facilities in Manbij were mistaken for Islamic State holdings and killed civilians, which were mainly workers.  

The spike in heroin use that has surged across the nation sowing panic in affluent suburban areas has been labeled a public health epidemic.

A new shape of brain cell was discovered in the hippocampus of a mouse brain.

What is reality? The question simulates wax.

But really, what is it? What is reality? A slice of toast still warm enough to allow a pat of butter to melt and become absorbed into the soft substance of the toasted bread.

The sharp granule which has strayed from Toby’s litter box and is under my heel in the bathroom.

Edges, snow, studios, coasts.

Reality is that hurricane of inscrutable pink in the candle next to the coffee cup with the faces of the Beatles as they appeared in 1965.

Charles Baudelaire listening to Wagner.

As for goals, I have no goals. I want to visit Paris at least one more time. I want a haircut that resembles fog.

I’m an aging organism. An organism full of other organisms. Organelles, mitochondria, bacteria. My being is a constellation of microbes and cells and colloidal particles such as spaghetti.

Emotion is sweat. The lather of high intensity evolving into a travel accessory. Free will when it mulls a moment in a rocking chair. A conundrum ranked as a grassy thought. The feeling of fingers in electricity. Coal and the hardware of song. Spit and adjectives. Claws and wings. Eternity turning viscous with gestation, the birth of another star. And when the buttons are green the emotion is partly mercury. Who turned the faucet? Tattoos argue gloom. Their narratives obscure the parchment of skin with a scripture of the streets, dragons and roses, snakes and palm trees. As for me, I prefer abstractions. The charm of antiquity, the contempt of dragons.

Herds of diamond centipede moving toward a carnival of aphids.