Gray Morning

I gorge on wheat thins while gazing at the remaining liquid in the bottle of dishwashing soap. It’s a pretty color. I’m engrossed. Dreamy. High on marijuana. I wonder about things. Warblers. Disk harrows. Ponds. Is Schrödinger’s frog the same as Basho’s frog? Is one both leaping and about to leap? Can a person simultaneously be alive and dead? The Buddha once said: “Every morning I drink from my favorite teacup. I hold it in my hands and feel the warmth of the cup from the hot liquid it contains. I breathe in the aroma of my tea and enjoy my mornings in this way. But in my mind the teacup is already broken.”

The basis for reality is the circle. Context. Intertextuality. Conservation of the circle is the core dynamic in nature.

New day. I hear the crows cawing. It’s a still gray morning. Winter is retreating, leaving behind a patchwork of snow and ice. The streets are bare. The sidewalks are almost bare. There are still patches of snow and ice here and there.

Pyrotechnics are the rhetoric of donkeys.

There. I said it. And now we have a road on which to impose our impossible thoughts. Pull them like wagons. Push them like wool.

The lid on the Smucker’s strawberry jam jar is plaid like a tablecloth. I maneuver the remaining jelly at the bottom with a butterknife. It comes easily, goopily to the edge, and I maneuver it onto a slice of toast.

It's as if the universe were under my skin, and everything I did and saw and smelled and heard and lifted and touched were a continuous satori of enormous translucence. That said, where does this anguish come from? Is it sequential, like a TV series, or the neurotic intrigue of a woodcut? Is it idle worthless worrying, or something bubbling up from the unconscious, a muskrat or diphthong? Oil. Rain. A little brown cloud.

These things happen. It’s a big planet. Any distress can serve as the lungs of an equation that can’t be solved by self-indulgence or joviality. One can coax the mystery of yellow into fuller expression by affirming the fragrances of spring with an ancient melody. Animals swimming toward the shore. Miles Davis in Montreux.

Who we are might be predetermined, but there is nothing perfunctory about a paper towel. Great lengths have been taken to make it absorbent but tough. We defy time, but time doesn’t give a shit. Time is time. It slices space into nice little manageable bits. Act One, Scene One. Old friends are reunited. New triumphs are celebrated. Courage is found to face the dishes. A little circumlocution can go a long way. Remnants of mousse wash away into the dark. A rationale is found to ease the remorse for everything percolating in the italics of a whirlwind impetuosity. But who is the man in the black coat, and who is that woman with him? She looks like Maria Casares. And yes. The big plates go on the lower shelf.

Now you shall see everything will go very slowly. Time is flexible. You can bend it. You can make pretzels out of it. Time is what gives space its special character. This is a meditative business. This is why things go slow. The snow takes a long time to melt. Each day there’s a little less. Each day there’s a little more traction, a little more purchase on the surface. And the crows come swooping down in elegant resolution, sure of one thing: get that peanut. The ground has been covered in snow for a full week and there’s been little to eat.

When I think of suede, I think of violins. I have the greed of the novelist whose lecture is unseasonably bulky. Nevertheless, the story moves forward, modulating itself as the detonations thunder in the distance and the sights of Moscow begin to shape our philosophy of empire.

There’s a dragon knocking at the border. Three hundred miles to the south, a woman combs her hair in the basement of a book about tug boats. I’m trying hard not to harm her propeller by using too many words to describe it, but the cat has a shadow and the bureau has a silence that only an egg could offend. Trust me. I’m not here to oblige any algorithms. This is about lucidity, how it writes its own meat into existence and then wiggles around with a genetic irritation. I enjoy creating personalities for boxes. Their lids are always so unfettered. How can you not study molasses? I work every day to enhance the feeling of elephants. The river is slippery because it’s wet not because it’s indecipherable. Although, there’s that as well. I aim to bring about a state of verbal tourism. I’m a little weary, but I think I can make it work if you’re willing to pay some attention to the confusion. Ginger and rubies sleep in the plaster. The mushrooms approve of damask. The shawl is aromatic, but the digressions are shocking. It’s what we want. What we all want. The cold hard stare of the moon. A man playing a trumpet. Reality granted its final wish: the ghost of a pain gurgling the heart of a mockingbird.