A Tale Of Infinite Variables

The sky sparkles with beatitude. A section of gauze brushes my consciousness. I can see through everything, but it’s all quite vague. This is a journey that progresses by sips and swigs and mimics the bursting of long suppressed emotions, each one of which holds up an insult with monumental aplomb. I need to do something totemic and intravenous. I tremble to weigh a vending machine. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since birth. I look to the sky for support and wisdom. Distant rock trinkets hang from an asteroid belt. Swoon hammers find a parable. I was never so glad as when I discovered tiptoe. Furrows in the field make pillows of the earth and fill my genitals with a storm of relevance. I think I've come as far as I can go without overflowing with huge overcoats. I crave to do something on the grass. Mud sucks the soul of the island until it becomes big and maternal like a tabloid. Everything on this planet is so weird all the time. Pain visits my knee in the form of a patellofemoral pain syndrome (everything is a syndrome here, or a syndicate or a synthetic), and smashed icicles make trails of mimosa silver. It must be obvious that to see something growl its way into palpable form can be a traumatic experience. This is why we use language. It speeds up the process and minimizes the level of pain. I can smell the earth sweat when tar is applied to a highway or a book struggles with its own perplexities. I sometimes forget that snow is the sugar of the gods. Close your eyes. Look deep in your mind. Ideas sparkle when they revolve like decadent aristocrats at a masked ball. This is a function of infinite variables. The stone is nothing until it creates a quotient. A stick divided by a shadow equals a moment in time. But when we do it, we are always amazed at how kids respond, especially those living deep in the bayou, where all the integers are divisible by moonlight. I once had a vision of the body as a coconut palm making out with the wind. I took an old dagger and stabbed the darkness. Night collapsed and spread its blood like starlight over the waves. I do these things not out of spite, but because I must, & because all my remaining needs require vivid descriptions to keep going, acts of desperation disguised as prose, otherwise what’s the point? I was mad to leave Norway. But the oysters here are delicious, & taste like madrigals of meat.  

Lately It Has Occurred To Me

Lately it has occurred to me that if I hadn’t made all the dumb choices I made in life, really stupid decisions, completely irresponsible, utterly mindless, that are somewhat compensated by some of my more prouder decisions, that if I had given into temptation on such and such an occasion, or if I’d not given into temptation on such and such a whim, or said this, or said that, or quit that job, get fired from that job, and so on and so forth, I would not be at this place, this circumstance, this adventure, this kismet, this karma, this eudemonia, which feels perfect to me.

Outside our gloom we can sometimes redeem ourselves through vagueness and fabrication. A gothic mailbox grows a beard and we call it a letter from God. Treasure this rapture. Map it. Smack it. Toss it like a stone among the beatitudes. It may not make a ripple. It may not make a wave. It may seem a little questionable, a little too sweet and difficult to digest. It may produce a fish. Sometimes a trout may seem like a donation, or a Hittite. You may call me wrong. You may call me pretentious. But is that any different than two suspicious characters in the park dismantling bikes? You can’t stop a perception from meaning something. All it takes is a smell, a pendulum, a face, or a stick of gum to send the imagination on a mission of import and daring. There is a room nearby in which I can dedicate my life to cinnabar. Please join me. Bring a cave. Bring a buddy and a crowbar. Together we will decipher codes from the death of the traffic light.

Some things in life are achieved through chicanery. Swelling, bloating, turgescence. All of it an act, of course, a representation possessed of sabotage and sackcloth calculated to arouse esteem and opportunity in the eyes of the pious. I think you know where this is going. If your answer is the latrine, I salute you. We can laugh now, and relax. No, this isn’t a survey, it’s more like a filiation mulled in balderdash with a dollop of bunkum and a side order of flapdoodle. These things come in handy when you’re attempting to swagger across the barroom floor with your spurs jingling and your conjectures lagging behind like a three-legged dog. And don’t you know that literature has gone the way of the deadlight? If you’ve spent any time at all eavesdropping on Kerouac’s letters, you’ll know there’s a place for ecstasy, and is revealed to you by flashlight. 

If you see a mountain in the distance, don’t rush towards it. Let it come to you. Point a stampede at it, of words and definitions. Write things down. It is with pleasure that I splash the notation with nouns. The immense sleet that blew it there continued its journey north. I felt within me a feeling of humble beginnings develop into a story. I was somewhere south of lethargy coming to in a bar in the Black Forest of Germany. I could hear a gust of wind outside, and injustice and clamors of deification. A flash of lightning as The Elves of Redemption thundered across the bridge. It has always been such. Some people want to know what. Others want to know why. I want to know what distant green knowledge is harbored in the skull and why it’s so hard to find.