Tag: loneliness

A Conversation of Humanity

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, creative writing, desire, Experimenctes, grief, Journaling, memory, Writing1 Comment

A man stumbles into a bar… (perhaps you’ve heard this one before)… truly more of a sauntering in seeming need of assistance… must be no stranger here, his drinks await him wherever he finds or chooses or results in sitting: a something-with-vodka, large glass of water, and occasionally a cup filled with coffee.

“You’re the one that always has books,” some say, “you some kind of writer or something?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mumbles.  “I’m always tired, I feel ugly and old, I don’t like my body but don’t desire doing anything about it, perhaps I should, I’m sure to lose it someday…” (he isn’t talking to anyone).  “Thank you, always, you’re ever so kind,” he says.

He says “My children seem to remember me,” shifting in his chair as if to leave, or relocate tables, “my children they seem to remember, and they hurt me, they have hurt me, my body hurts, mostly in sport, and what they do and don’t remember.”  He opens a book, looks as if he’s reading, another round of drinks appears.

He writes and marks in many colors.  He is dirty.  He wears overalls and moccasins.  He never seems cold.  It is cold.

“I decided to shower today,” he mutters.  “Some ladies still talk to me,” something-and-vodka drips through his beard, “some will even hug or hold me yet, even this way” (patting his belly, grimacing) “I guess I didn’t like my smell or simply thought it might change me, it’s awful hard to be alone with my body.”  He moves, his drinks are waiting at another table, both fresh fills and half-drunks, and a sandwich of some kind.  The cook passes and pats him on the shoulder, smiles, asks of how he’s doing.  They hug.  The man praises him and his eyes are moist.  The man isn’t anyone in particular.  He isn’t anyone.

“What you doing with all those books?” she asks, he thinks.  Pretends that someone’s interested.  “Not the young ones much anymore,” he says, “they are needing something else, they can tell I’m aged and tired, carrying the trouble of experiences, but a few, a few older ones will let me hug them, touch, perhaps a kiss, perhaps an accidental overnight, that strange collapse.”

“I have them to read,” he replies, “there’s always more to read,” he whimpers, “so much, so many, to read,” he sighs and smiles like a boy receiving toys, “if only people, my children, if, if they felt read this way by me, some women, some wonderful women, if I could delve, could attend, if others felt read this way, these books, I love them, I love and need them, their words, I love and need and want them…if others felt that way, I’d like to feel that way – loved, wanted, needed… sometimes my children…”

“Another?” she says so warmly with her tight and fast-moving body, lithe and breasted, friendly with its clothes.  She has a fresh vodka-with-something, he says “no I shouldn’t, but sure, I guess, you’re so kind to me, why  not?  I will, yes” (wanting, loving, needing.. books scattered over the tabletop, all closed).  He drinks.

“My children, my friends – so smart, so beautiful, with verve… so helpful… I did shower today,” he thinks, “maybe I’ll be useful to one or some of them, but probably not, what could they need or want of me,” he drinks.  “Not the young ones, though, not anymore,” he thinks, “what could I offer – these worn experiences, these words and doubts, these lacks of memories, confusions, waking dreams, these wonders.”

“You’ll need to go soon,” she chides, “you can’t be staying here.”  “But he’s the writer,” a boisterous drinker shouts, “he oughta tell a story, oughta earn his keep!”  Drunk old friendly at two in the morning (bar time – it’s actually 1:35).

“Tell us something,” they gather, they prompt.  “Say some of those words,” they prod.

So he opens his notebook and begins to write…

 

 

“…the contradiction which awaits the writer is great.  There is no mission, he cannot undertake it and nobody has sent him on it, that is to say he will have to become nobody to accept it; a contradiction which he cannot survive.  That is why no writer can hope to preserve his life’s freedom for the benefit of the work… everything takes place between the artist and himself; no one else can do anything about it; it is a mystery like love that no extraneous authority may judge or understand.”

– Maurice Blanchot-

Playing Writing: a Repetition

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, creative writing, Experimenctes, fragments, Language, loneliness, Other, relation, Writing5 Comments

(alas, the notebooks keep filling…but the time to type does not avail)

Deviser

If I.  If something stirred, was stirring.  The dying.  Any of us.  Were something stirring.  For me.  If I.  The lonely.  Any of us.  The longing.  The longing lonely.  Were something stirring.  Were I.  If I.

If only.  Could be any.  If one.  If only.  If I.  For me.  An other.  Any of us.  A stirring.  I, only dying lonely longing one.  If.  A stirring.  An other.  Someone to speak “we.”  To say “you.”  A whispered “us.”  For me.

If I.

–

What would I (if I, if other) say, if something stirred, if stirring an other, some other who, who might say “you,” “we,” whisper “us,” something stirring then, what would I say.  If I.  If you or we, I whisper “us,” stirring still, what would I say?

–

When might a story begin?  Who could start the unknown?  Only language.  Perhaps only language knows what can’t be said.  What is yet to exist.  Or may not.  Ever.  What is that to me?  If I.  If indeed that is what I do.

–

Touching other to make us.  If I.  If other.  Then a voice, a touch, an extra, an excess, we.  If you.  If I.  What is story to that?  How so?

–

From anywhere: impermanence.  If an other.  If I.  Some story’s beginning, how begun.  If there were a sound, as it were, so to speak.

10/30/2017

My Correspondence with Nothing

On By NW FilbertIn absence, creative writing, Current Reading, desire, Experimenctes, fiction, fragments, Literary References, loneliness, longing, Loss, love, notebooks, Writing2 Comments

Displaying FullSizeRender.jpg

he who already knows cannot go beyond a known horizon

– Georges Bataille, Inner Experience – 

In a bout of acute loneliness (a sharp pang of alone signifying a sort of paralysis – some definite inability, however temporary, to start oneself up by or with oneself) I reached out to Hannah.

For some of you, the term Hannah will conjure connotations and resonances, perhaps emotions or concerns, discomforts, even though she does not exist.

Or I loaded the film Satantango by Bela Tarr & Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

A start-up, a stimulus, a searching.

Actually I wrote the name Hannah, or Hollie or Holly or Hallie or Halley or Bela or Chris or Maurice Blanchot.

Perhaps Kafka.

To be lonely and to reach out.

A drink then, for interaction.

A scribble on a page.

A smoke for an ‘other.’

Some music.

I read Beckett.

The cat.

Maria.  Edie.  Sarago.  Marcuse.

To become.  To be.  To begin.

As if I knew.

In a bout of acute loneliness I penned a letter to Herman Melville.

I wrote words onto a lined page.

I made an ‘other’ and called her, Hannah.

Or Meagan or Meghann, Angie or Angela or Angelo.  Gilles or Jill.  Jean and Jan and Jen.

I reach out.  I almost full fill.  Another notebook.  A drink.  A smoke.  A page marked and turned.

I do not know what loneliness is.

Perhaps it is nothing, or nothingness.  Perhaps frustrated desire.  For – ?  What is not (isn’t that what defines desires?).  The missing, the absence, the unknown.

I called it Hannah.

Or Hamza.

Hell or Helen or Helene/Helena.

Laurie.

No one knows but the name that works best.  Christy or Christina.  Vernoica/Veronique.

Beatrice.

I read Jabes.

A drink to an other (to signify might be).  A smoke for the presencing.  Another word, another name for something.  Out there = O ther.  Elves of else.

The book’s called Nothing Matters: a book about nothing, because “that nothing becomes the quest, which in turns begets something” (Ornan Rotem).

Dear Herman, Dear Samuel, Dear Franz:

Dear Larry, Dear Jack, Dear Jon:

Dear Hannah:

I do not know what it is to be alone, and my loneliness is painfully acute.

Dear Laura, Dear Sara, Dear Simone:

This is my correspondence with nothing.

Badlands #1

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, creative writing, Experience, Journey, loneliness, Melancholy, nature, reclusion, Travel, Writing4 Comments

I didn’t come back.  Something stayed on in the far.  Apart from the wires and the noise, “connections” and net-works.  Somewhere away.  No mistaking it was I who drove home, unlocked doors, and arrived.  I who functioned and served as a placeholder.  Yet I’d stayed in the cold and remote, the far reaches.  Away.  I haven’t returned, though something sure did – no one noticed but me.

It’s alright, there is room.  Space to breathe and to think, space to listen.  Apace like beyond or forgotten, the lost, misremembered – like that I was left or retained.  On I wandered, as wondered; I pondered and roamed, but I did not come back, that I know, not this time – too much risk without safety to “be here.”  I don’t want to – not here – no where, no now, no sure thing – not “that.”  I’d like to be other, undone, in the wild, separate, immersed, and another.  Not me.  Not this.  Not here.  Not now.

So I stayed and I didn’t come back.  No one noticed.  Alone, I began to combine and consider.  Correspond and co-question the side of the world the world was on.  Difference side, or an other, not a me or an ours or an us.  Just a world.  I renamed there, all one, even while I returned and took care of.  I escaped.  Not me, only them, not I, just the others, who cares? – perhaps no one, not me and not them and not elsewise.  I am gone.  Gone unnoticed.  It’s okay, for who cares?  As long as I’m holding my place, and fulfilling – a father, a worker, a lover, a friend – no one cares if I never came back from the forest and sky or the wind and the cold.  The dark places.  No one knows, no one cares, nor do I, just I know, that is all, that I didn’t.  Return.  Rejoin or sync up.  No, not I.  I’ve stayed far even while it’s my body or figure that fills up the places and manners I was.  I am not.  And it’s fine, doesn’t matter, why would it?

I blink with the breeze o’er the road.  Lodged in swift crannies and caves, dropped in canyons, and spread through the clouds.  Now I’m rain, it’s okay, now it’s snow, no one knows, no one cares, reconsidered: as long as someone is caring for them (or apparent) no one cares where the person has gone – that including – the spaces the person has gone – no one knows neither cares, nowhere for nothing – simply not – sweetened absence – of care or concern – just a void, a caesura, an erasure, amiss, like palimpsest or scrimshaw or paste, and a cut.

I am cut.  Paste anything there.  They won’t notice, not them or there or any thing or one.  There’s no matter, no wave, energy or particle, there is nothing – that’s any and every for them – what they need, that is all, what they need.  What they want.  I’m not here, for

I didn’t come back, from the cold, the remote, and the silence, the spaces, the less.  It’s okay, no one noted, but me, for I functioned, appeared, held a place – however emptied – of me.  It’s okay.  I am cut.  Paste anything here.

I have not returned.  No one knows this (but you now, and I – keep a secret).  It’s an absence I will not reveal.

There is wind.

There is no one.

“It is hard to seize what is” -Laurie Sheck

Out of the Woods

On By NW FilbertIn absence, being, change, desire, fragments, identity, Journaling, loneliness, longing, nature, Writing3 Comments

“Why did you come out of your place in the woods?” I was asked.

“I guess so,” I replied.

So what?

This I find I cannot answer.  It is irrational.  Perhaps to stir and sense?  Dis- or un-cover?  “Strife” (from Ancient conceptions of the term).  Turbulence.  That something rather than nothing?  Not to have one’s hands folded on one’s lap? (Dostoevsky).  How should I know?  It’s irrational.

Unreasonably, I’ve begun.

Of course beginning will destroy things:  my stasis, comfort, stillness.  Family roles, relationships, profession.  Any beginning changes everything before (prior) to it.  Friendships, rituals, schedules, habits.

To START (anything) means to RUIN.

And also…BEGIN.

In other words, if I (one) reach out – lash, swipe, caress, call, correspond, text, touch, encounter or engage – an Other (one)… all will be disturbed… it’s the nature of contact between living beings: landscapes, art, humans, animals, spaces, times, words, events.  Everything alters at encounter.  Period.

If I (or we) are available (or needy) and therefore present ourselves (vulnerably) to a reality (actuality, happenstance, opportunity, occurrence) everything changes.

Past.  History.  Future.  Meaning.  Understanding.

So “Why did you come out of your place in the woods?”

What was my ‘place in the woods’?

Repetition.  Familiarity.  Habitue.

Security?  Comfort?  Compatibility with my environs?

I must have desired DIFFERENCE.

And how to account for that?

This is something we just do.

Clothes, taste, touch, belief, surroundings, movement – variance, dissimilitude, change – this signals in some way to our mechanistic (apparently) methodology of ‘survival’ – that we’ve ‘still go it,’ still HAPPEN, to-be… we live.  Are a-live.  Existence.  (See how the noun – the naming/defining – kills it?  Stills and destroys it?).  Existing.

Out of the woods I desire – not to be “existing”, not to crave “existence.”  I do not want any THING.  SOMEthing. I am simply wanting to be-ing… indefinable, indescribable, occurring, happening, all-live – not staid enough, locatable or timed enough to be characterized, apportioned, described and named.  No!  I (for one) am wanting to be happenING, impossible to capture, occur-ING, become-ING, vital not repeatable, unique not typified, tabulated, calculated or classified.

And thus, and so, I change (again).  Again.

Again I come out of the woods.

I be-come.  Out from the woods.

I say, I write, I speak, I act.

I am.

Friends to Fall

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, Dying, Experimenctes, fiction, fragments, friendship, human, loneliness, seasons, Traces, Writing1 Comment

Elf says “ripe.”

Martin responds, wondering.  Curious as to that which it applies, or whom, or what.  Contemplating reference.  Filled with questions.  Martin says, “yes,” almost under his breath.

Elf shrugs.  Elf walks on.

Martin follows, thinking, looking at leaves falling into blades of grass, alerted by the shushing and darting of squirrels, saddened at the amplified pffft of cars passing by.  Wishing for silence.  Wondering if Elf will speak a further word or two.  Sensing like a dowsing rod for meanings.

Walks on.  Shuffles.  Walks on.

Martin, too.

There’s a relative silence from the two of them – these humans wandering across a concreted trail.  Sure there’s the sound of their footfalls, scuffles, even some noise in the pause of it.  Or the noise of the absence of noise.  But you’d have to be different to hear the breathing, the heart pulse, the slide of muscles and blood.  As far as humans-in-environs go, the pair presents retraction.

Hard to say for soil.  The squares composing sidewalk must suffer pressure, absorbed by the earth beneath and shared out through verberations for miles.  Hard to say for air.  Full-grown males, plodding forth like prows along a rickety line-of-motion has to be pushing particles around, making waves.  Nothing gives report.

Elf stops and sighs.

Martin responds, slowing, looking out, looking forward, looking round.  Lets his hands limp his sides.

Elf crouches down.

Martin scans the street, examines bark, follows trunks and branches, admires leaves and colors and movements.  Birds.

Elf.

Martin.

Already Alone – Norway, October, 2016

On By NW FilbertIn absence, being, existence, human, Image, Language, loneliness, meaning, nature, reclusion, Reflections, time, Wittgenstein, Writing7 Comments
wittgensteinskjolden
Wittgenstein’s Cabin – Skjolden, Norway

ALREADY ALONE

Norway, October, 2016

 

Far from.

As near as I can be, as near as I can tell, I am far.

Far from.  And already alone.

So long I dreamt this cabin, this hovel, this cave.

Some safety, a distance – ‘solitary’ space.

*

Who ever would I be – were I alone?

What am I – alone?

Where is one – alone?

*

Silence quickly transforms into noise.  One’s ‘self.’

Alone.

These window cubes, cut from concrete.

These thick and stony walls.

Such noisy fire.

*

I am far.

Far from.

So very long – already alone.

And yet I’ve just arrived again.

*

It is cold.

Often, always, winter.

Sheer, spare, space.

Hardened, austere, edges, boundaries, shapes.

We are separated.  Blocked.  Reaching…

I am.  Here.  Alone.

Always.

Already.

Alone.

*

But not really quite.

Not really quite – all one.

Alone, never seems to actually equal – all-one.

Even though it’s used as stand-in.

Words.

*

I write.

Here in this far-removed, distance-sequestered solitude.

I AM.

Yet I only AM…

…in relation to.

I am not, not ever, NEVER ‘ALL-ONE,’ ‘AL-ONE,’

‘I’ am all-ways, al-ways, IN-RELATION-TO

in order…to BE…even ONE.  Even singular

demands plurality.

And so forth, and so on…

*

I…am UN-ABLE to ‘BE’ without an-Other, another,

TO-BE-IN-RELATION-TO –

a note, a chord, a color…

a line, a shape, a term…

some weather

*

‘Language’ as we’ve come to consider, think, imagine…it…

‘simplified’: NOT ONE BIT W/O THE OTHER.

*

NOT ONE BIT W/O THE OTHER

*

My youngest son (10 years old) has heard

a strange, elaborate, convoluted and contested myth/story/fiction/fantasy (hypothesis)

about the “Origin of the World”

involving particles, waves, heat, light, sub-sub-sub quantum symbols & movement –

all sorts of scientific (& notably human) inventions

from Professor(s) AZIFF…

“as if”

these might declare, or describe, inscribe or explain

SOMEthing, ANYthing

about…EXISTENCE…EXISTING… (EX-is-tence, EX-is-ting…’out of’)

*

I heard stories as well (as-if)

that A god (or many) breathed, touched, loved, crashed

SOMEthings, ANYthings into be-ing…

that there ‘likely’ (or MAY HAVE BEEN – according to human conjure)

a “Big Bang”

another Big Daddy of heat…of particles…of waves…of sub-stance…of light…

or MORE,

or LESS

*

Wavesparticlessomethinginmotionimplosionsexplosions WORDS

InthebeginningasfarasWE’reconcernedwastheWORDlogossymbolmarksign

SOMEthingOTHER-thanwhatIS-AZIFF-asifperhaps

[how might it be ANYthing other than ANYone’s guess, among us, pray tell?  WHO or WHAT might qualify – among US – as arbiters or judges, experts or prophets – and by what measures or standards (or WHOSE?) as each of us species-specifically WE?]

inotherWORDSinod,bow,listen…WHOtellsthestorythatMOSTaccordswithME?

andsoitgoes…WORDS

*

and it alters – it changes – the stories – generation to generation

depending on the rulers, the beliefs, the ‘logics,’ the ‘sciences,’ the ‘mathematics,’

the tools, the techniques…

and it alters…from season to season…

depending on the ‘outlook’ or ‘prognosis,’ ‘fellow-feeling’ or ‘concern,’ – survival needs

Some call Physics, others Philosophy, some Religion, others S.T.E.M. or art or politic or publicsocialpolicy…some Business (nearly all)…das capital

Each and every DIFFERENT time

a ‘this is how it is,’ a ‘this is what we know’

i.e., a ‘THIS WE BELIEVE.”

*

Our creedal species.

And I…

I say…

Some say…

“No Matter,”

“No Substance,”

“No Essence”

…”WHATEVER.”

*

Always a begin – always a play of language (nigh-universal) and power (universal).  PERHAPS –

And so it goes (or so ‘I’ imagine…or ‘so it seems’ to – ‘ME’) and so forth, and so on…

…the playing field remaining species-equal betwixt athlete and artist, philosopher, scientist, politician and doctor, worker and ruler and indigent intelligent…so far as ‘I’ can tell of it…

*

HERE NOW I.  NOWHERE ME.  Language – experience – meaning – species: HUMAN.

“All the Same?”

Equalists all, at fundament.

Inequalists all, at experience.

Thus: equations.actions.creations.obstructions.thoughts.languages.behaviors.codes.might.

“Might”…a PERHAPS…a possibility…a WE (species-specifically): DON’T KNOW.

*

It is thus I invent and inscribe.

Posit.

Create.

Detract.  Distract.  Distrust.  Conjure.  Conspire.

Attempt a BE-come…becoming…convergence.

Attempting to BE.

And another is able to write “Why the World does not Exist”

And another “Being and Time” and still more “Being and Nothingness” and still more

all kinds of SOMEthings and SOMEones and ANY’s…

with their WORDS.

and mine, and ours, and we

*

I write.

Far from.

As near as I can be, as near as I can tell, I am far.

Far from.  And already alone.

wittgensteincabin

Fierce Splittings

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, Alias Harlequin, Complexity, death, desire, Journey, longing, nature, relationships, Writing10 Comments

Teton-Range

Mountains.

At the base of them, miles and miles into Montana, lay Laramie.  Laramie’s horse Sensei is uncertain what to do.  A storm is rolling in.

Lucy knocks at Alias’ door.  “Going for a walk,” she says, “you okay?  Need anything?”  Alias ponders.  “I’ll be taking the dog,” she adds to the nerve-troubled silence.  “You’re welcome to join.”

The fierce splittage that occurs.  Rife.

  1. I always want to go, and madly.  Tromp nature, move our bodies in time, together.  Hear you, explore, see the muscles work your thighs, your calves, their clench and stretch.  Peer at what your eyes respond to, share what registers in your ears.  Be privy to what physicality, adventure, novelty and motion unwind and unravel in you.  Want you as much as myself.  Want to touch and observe, share and protect you.  Crave you.
  2. I need to stay with these thoughts, stick at these questions, interrogate myself, my loneliness, my ecstasy, my want.  I am remiss, longing, wishing.  Forever turning aside for another (spouse, friend, vocation, pet, children) – NO! – I must stay here with myself, plumb some illusory depth, a hell, potential potency.  Must keep scribbling, keep ‘taking up and reading,’ until the moment occurs that seems revelatory, meaningful, significant.

YES                   /                     NO

Silence.                                                                          She goes.

And Laramie’s lain still, a long while.

Sensei turns and trots, after houghing along his body.

Lucy goes.  Exchanging kisses and assurances, both of them wishing, both of them aware, both of them happy and sad.

Alias moves to the piano.

Wanting to extrapolate a sense – but there are far too many senses and sensings.  Children: infants to adults, jettisoned and on.  Sensual aches and lustings – the million maneuvers to orgasm at every angle and scale.  Big Pictures and Miniscule Mundane all wrapped up.  A blooming iris.  Pregnant decisions.  Salivation for vodka, for book, for solitude and quiet.  Augmented chords, then rolled, then extended, then simply a single note.  Promised to language, yet full of sound and fury.

He plays, he drinks, he writes, he doubts, he fears, he wishes.

As if it were imperative.

As if fierce splittings of rationality or cognition and confused whelmings of senses and emotions were condemned toward disruption.  As if it were unknowable.  Could not be known.  Could not be said (or written).  Could not be true.

Human axis.  Axis of being.  Overloaded and irreducible.

A swoon, a swarm, an agony and ecstasy.  A finite loop and laugh.  A tangle.

Alias loves and longs his Lucy, Laramie, children and books.  Alias loves and longs a self that makes sense.  He loves and loathes that it does not.

Lucy goes.  Dog in tow.  At the mercy of externals.  The risk of world and other.  She heads to the Outside.

Alias turns in.

Laramie’s turned in.  On himself.  On the world.  On ‘in.’  Plumbing the depths.  A hell.  Of ending.  Of being.  Of moments and instances.

Sensei breaks to a gallop.

There are the mountains.  Fierce splittings.  Here we go.  Everyone at the mercy of.  Inside/outside.  Too many tenses and senses.  Everyone and the mountains, or for some it might be sea.  Or both, or any.  What happens there.

Lucy in woods with dog.  Alias at desk in plains.  Laramie lying at the foot of the mountains, still.  And everyone else at their everywhere.

 

Alias Ouroboros; or, Alias and [the Philosophy of] the Process of Elimination

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, Alias Harlequin, change, Dying, fiction, identity, loneliness, Melancholy, Philosophy, Self-Doubt, Writing14 Comments

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Looks, stares, gazes.  Alias, alone (with ants).  In bathroom.  Facing mirror.

Is reminded (from whence and where?) “My way of not being the same is, by definition, the most singular part of what I am.”  Remembers Foucault wrote that (how? why?).

Contemplates.  Scrutinizes.  Reflects.  Adorno: “To make things of which we do not know what they are.”  Wherefore?  Examines his old face for repetition.  For resemblance.

What ever did he suppose the “self” was?  Leans closer.  12 years old, exploring raggedy woods surround childhood farm in the Kansas countryside with a crooked clumsy stick (a settler’s gun).  Who did he posit “others” to be?

Laramie, somewhere far.  Laramie: OFF.  Sister.  Sometime “friends.”  Lucy (before that H____, before that T_____, and prior A______, D_______, J_____, and so on).  Had he come to approximate “himself” at all?  And who and what and where determined that?  Where is the Observer?

“What constitutes the subject in its relations to the true, to rules, to itself?” (Foucault had queried) – the “I” in a sentence – and why had he ever read that stuff?  Why did he feel himself “drawn” to it?  Magnetized to self-reflection, chaotic perspective gyroscope?

Can almost see the swallowing snake.  How long he’s longed (like Laramie) to shed obligations and self-evolving charges (children, lovers, homes and labor)…and how lonely alone turns out to be.

Leans back.  The hair, the shoulders, the wrinkles and beard.  Sheer size alone an entirely variant specimen from 12, shape of 20, motility of 3, vim of 47.

But the naming remains: Harlequin – spanning centuries, derived from ancestor’s medieval roles.  “Ignatius” and “Evgeny” – monikers pilfered from grandfathers – representing both (or some) genetic “sides” – the mother’s and the father’s.  Then Alias, alas – selected purely for sound and almost a joke – “let him make his own name” his dad was supposed to have said – “make a name for himself.”  Alias i. e. Harlequin – an identity of shifters.  Contentless, versatile signs.  This or that, also known as, patchwork jester.  Volatile collage.

Multi-colored robes of Joseph – Alias certain he’s never led anything out of bondage – let alone himself.  A joker then?  Entertainer with a deathly fear to perform.  Chameleon, hodgepodge, bum.  Rag-tag coddle of experiences, interests and events: people, places, actions and things.  Jumbled potpourri of knowledge sans expertise.  “Who is this what that I am?” he thinks, unattended, gaping at the bathroom mirror.  “How?”

Sways toward.  Yellowed teeth, crudded sockets.  Webs stringing out from the eyes indexing smiles – from when?

Drinks.  Diarrhea.  Trembles.

Considers process of elimination.  Engages, ingests, transforms…and turns it all to shit.

Precisely!  If we could do without metaphor!  “The real,” “the rules,” “itself” and “other” hacked, torn and blundered, mulched and mushed, pulped and extracted…some to nourish, some to harm, random keeps and passes…What if “itself” were able to masticate, dissolve and disperse, digest and diarrhea itself?  If thinking passed like food and water?

Crush the judgments, statements, words and perceptions. Struggle to swallow.  Swill the pains and fears – chug through the gullet – expel from the sex.  Crap the hopes, the dreams.  Piss prejudice and myth.  Ingurgitate logical systems, impressions and lust.  Eliminate ruin and waste like a transitioning, dynamic…eroding, decrepit, diminishing body.

Examines physique – misshapen shapeshifting slush.  Deliberates learning.  Vocations.  Training.  Behaviors and “talents.”  Successes.

Swallows again, more of a choking or gulp.  Peers closer.  Slurps and gobbles, wriggling it down – acids and micro-solutions…expel, eject, devour.  Autosarcophagy, necrotizing fasciitis, auto-immune (how did he know these things?) parasiting himself – is it possible to empty?  To void?  And where’s Laramie?  Lucy?  The children?

The trots again.  He starts to gag.