Dipping The Eyes

Not a single object can be described. Not fully. Not completely. Not so that its essence can be entirely transmitted. The words are too clumsy.

So why even try?

Well, you’ve got to try. I mean if it’s important to you to do that.

Nobody’s going to give a shit. Most people avoid reality. It’s the sensible thing to do. Reality hurts. You start going after essences and you’ll find that out soon enough. Just a warning. That’s all.

That said, describe something. Describe a cat. Not cats in general. Not the species. A biologist can do that. A particular cat.

My cat is a black and white female. She has a patch of white on her nose, white paws, and a patch of white on her belly. Her fur feels smooth. She loves receiving and showing affection. She loves licking my hand. As soon as I begin stroking her she’ll begin licking my hand. She will sometimes lick my eyelids in order to get me awake to feed her. She loves to eat. She’s obsessed with eating. She was eight pounds when we brought her home. And she weighs eleven. She’s an indoor cat so she doesn’t get exercise hunting, but we do try to play with her. One never knows whether she is genuinely hungry or wanting to eat out of boredom. It’s a dilemma. She begs constantly. She’s good at it. She will sit by her bowl and look at you pleadingly. She will rub against your legs. She will reach up and claw your pants. She will break you down.

That’s one way to describe her. Here’s another: my cat is a subtle contrarian with gray-blue fur and volcanic eyes. Her teeth are bright as lunar shadows and her legs are as solid as mahogany doors in a best-seller about the Pyrenees. She likes to play with bean coupons and distresses the carpentry of meaning with the hard laughter of the undertaker. She can balance a table on her tongue and thunders like a hippopotamus in a coconut tree. Her claws are like foundry commas and her breath is as fragrant as a souk in Tunisia.

A person is not just the sum of the chemicals in their brain. Sometimes it takes a Ferris Wheel to draw the correct conclusion about life.

That includes cats, but it might also refer to the act or manner in which objects or animals are perceived. Some believe that the sole object of perception is the thing-in-itself. Others believe that a realistic lure isn’t a lure that looks exactly like what fish are eating, but features a pattern that has a general match for what fish are eating. Religions are more like trees; they have multiple branches and roots that go deep into the unconscious, finding nourishment among worms and darkness.

Desire is the best way to come to know reality. Illusion is its sad consolation prize. Utopias generally lead to disaster. Avoid isms. Isms are prisons.

The way to what is most near to us is the longest and the most difficult.

Said Heidegger.

The margin constrains the circle.

Said Anne-Marie Albiach.

Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.

Said Francis Picabia.

Life is that which, undertaken, oscillates between wakefulness and dream. There is no reason for life to be hollow or terrible, but sometimes it can be raw and horizontal. I entered life as I found it, visceral and wet and surrounded by Minneapolis. Later, I discovered secretion and oysters. I sat under a piano and wore a cowboy hat.

The kiwis came later, with fecundation and sunglasses. That's why I often feel the urge to paint. The realism of plumbing leaves me no alternative but to use black for the microscope and blue and white for the birds on the ceiling. I can no longer behave like a vestibule. I must percolate violins. I must rush to the zoo. I must paint the guitar with reminiscence. I must drive the crisis to a drugstore. I must use geometry. I must introduce you to coconut.

It’s not often I feel luminous. But when I do, I pin a gardenia in my lapel.

There’s a door of ice hinged with silver that opens to the gnarled spectacle of wanting and a room in which the body finds its bones and flesh. I'll open it and see if the room I imagine is also the one I'm already sitting in. I like my chair, even if it’s torn, and the reality of it that supports my illusions, which are tufted with the upholstery of the troika, and creaks with infinity. These are just shadows, but the algae are real, and the machines in the sand are words, the gears pulling my life into the tinkling of the chandeliers.