Being Is A Feeling

Sunset is protected by distance. It can never be caught and put in a jar because it’s always running away into the night. As soon as you think you’re there you discover that you’re not even close. Keep running after the sun fast enough and you’ll find that one person’s sunset is another person’s morning.

The sun stumbles over the horizon in search of something to thaw. Thousands of snowmen melt. Definition arrives in a jeep. It’s another lonely day. But not for everyone. For some it’s a raw reckoning and a tight grip and for others it’s a yodeling competition. Each jar is labeled, each aim is solid. Charcoal drinks the seclusion of rue.

Power is obtained by rope. Rope is obtained by thought. Thought is obtained by energy. Energy is obtained by sunlight. Pronouns are obtained by thumb and forefinger. I am the least interesting thing about me. And then comes wrestling. We must wrestle the thoughts that are the most literal. Metaphorical thoughts are matters of absorption. A paper towel is a metaphor. A worm is not. A worm is literal.

I think I see a feeling. Or does a feeling see me? Am I the feeling or is the feeling one of nature’s divine prodigies still water skiing in my briefcase?

Is being a feeling?

Being is a feeling. It’s also an occurrence. It feels mongrel and atmospheric and ticklish. It feels like being when being is a matter of struggling through life and mud as a worm.

Or not.

Worms live in dirt. Words live in spurts. Which is dirtier, dirt or dandruff? Dandruff isn’t dirty. Dandruff is messy, but it’s not dirty. It doesn’t flash like a road sign. But it can be quite embarrassing at a dance club on a black sweater in a blue light.

It's the wild hour of allegory. Let’s build a bonfire of buttermilk leaves. It takes heat to experience the power of language. The knee glue diver comes up with a chestnut chewed into birth. This makes everyone totemic.

Birth is a matter of perseverance, said the first lieutenant of sociability. Armies of sociability travel the night in search of the social. The social inhabits the jelly of affability. The debris of surrender flops down on a canvas and assumes a posture of divine hysteria. Everyone talks about Norway, how rocky it is, how rapturous in beauty, how topographic and blunt.

Outside of Oslo, I don’t know of a single driveway that doesn’t relish its being, its ontology of necessity and convenience locked in an embrace of imagery and wheel.

The control of cubes is occasionally brick. There’s more than one way to wear a stream of water. My argument is bathed in milk, not description. I see a development of this theme that slithers across Cezanne seething with harps and oboes. I see another rolling into auburn creating diversions of pink and brown. I don’t know which of them is authentic and which of them is arranged in pleats.

Or should be arranged in pleats.

Morality should be arranged in pleats. There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic. It looks more like fish. Thus the pleat, which is suffused with sunlight at a certain time in the afternoon, lingers in the mind as a form of overtone, an inflection of air if the window is left slightly open, a puff of palliative, a stirring of cotton, a bulging of fabric that reminds us – however haphazardly - of scallops. Cephalopods, gastropods, polyplacophorans. Elegy, laughter, Montmartre. We are alert to nuance. There are no polarities of yes and no. There are no clear answers. There is only the mania of milk-secreting glands and the pantomime of excuse.

In other words, communion.

No admonition is vexatious if it is made by a sad man on the corner of a street. Money isn’t food. It isn’t even pretty. It's a medium of exchange, like folklore, or power. It’s in the sneeze of process that the dollars of heaven come raining down as potash.

The hour of sleep is upon us. The toad is welcome. Welcome to Being. Welcome to the garden. Welcome to squatting. Welcome to underbrush and description and flies.

The sediment of a word lifts the toad to our mouth and we say it as a refund. It’s a mechanical maneuver, mostly, with a little pulp to incite it into category. The oyster is my comrade, but the pillow is my gym. My head is full of seashore. But the hay is easy by the lake. I will go there. This is the place where fingers exhort the palpability of rings to shine more energetically, as if syntax could mimic the properties of glass. The fresh spin of thought has been sewn together by insects. I know what shouting is. Shouting is solid and loud. The quiet simmer of language absorbs the light and fondles our elbows.

I’m sorry. Am I being obscure? I meant to be snow. I meant to be obvious and bones. I meant to push these luxuries forward where they might be seen by pilgrims. It’s so nice to have a diversion. Bugs are signs. They rarely shine now. They stopped increasing and began decreasing. Autumn isn’t what it used to be. Consciousness isn’t what it used to be, either. It used to be rocks but now it’s more like horses. All urgency and play, glistening and breath.