matter ===> phase

we are picking thru broken glass on the bathroom tiles, which are a grid and a map, a strange projection, that's what's happened hasn't it, the once achingly round now dropped & flattened for our analysis, only it is hard to read, we are cutting our fingers twice in one place, once somewhere else, but the markings are like press-pins, like mosquitos caught well-fed and too slow, we are clearing a space and charting passage, moving forward and thankful the cries of what's left behind & passed over are faint against the fabric rounded on our knees, safe in their undrawn borders, calm in our mechanical refinement, on the carpet now, inventing perhaps the cotton gin, collecting everything on sheafs of tissues like a screen, like or very possibly actually coffee filters, we reached for anything and it obliged and later, balled & crumpled, rang like very small and misshapen and unlovable bells -- and always against these graded images & dim observation our one clear thought is that this all looks so much like ice

we could stop, stand, forget our structured self-preservation: given time the glass would like ice give up too, disappear, would buckle at its lattices, would melt and evaporate and be breathed into our lungs and cast down innumerable narrowing arteries, thoroughly and forever vanished

and isn't the analogy true enough? glass ignored and stepped over and on long enough and ground back into quartz and secreted in the pores and the creases and the gaps between and among and constituting everything, isn't that similar enough, identical in fact, the same process exactly perfectly the same the same the same

of course we will be long past walking then -- these lacerations, no doctor, it is frostbite, we will tell the doctors, our rooms were too cold! we hadn't counted on that, we will laugh at ourselves and put our doctors at ease, the ice could not melt! domestic frostbite, yes it is rare, but our rooms were too cold!

and covered in ice!

we are breaking so many glasses now. each glass broken is scooped into the next, we turn the ice musically in our tumblers, our drinks are perpetually chilled. we have fixed the heat in our rooms, they are very hot now, we are always in need of refreshment. we are drinking deeply from our glasses perpetually chilled, collecting the bright curling ice from our floor, filling our tub brightly, the shifting buoyant glass really sounds against itself just like ice floes cracking! we are sinking deeply into our ice bathes, we are really really refreshed

so much like ice!

we are passing from here to somewhere else. we are returning.

these thoughts seem very dangerous to us; just what did we break on the uneven, the improperly squared linoleum tile? a coffee pot? just the glass. the harness sits on the counter, grasping, specific but able also it seems to fit to a limitless arrangement of things. a tool for sculpting we think. we are lost in our thoughts. our thoughts are sublimating, if that is possible. the tentative emerging volumes of our thoughts, our sculpted reductions and evidences, they are changing directly into airy nothings, vapors. what were we thinking? we are vacuuming, we have stuck in our heads its high crooning song, we are noting with satisfaction the grit sounding in its brushes. what was it we broke? all the signs are vanished, washed over, blown away. we can't remember.

feels like my life has been spent protecting something

i don't want

and can't lose

like crop dusting a well-groomed field of weeds

everyday

until the ground is thoroughly toxic

like breaking into empty apartments

and reversing the peephole

like taking pictures of my hands and my knees and the back of my neck

and uploading them to social networking sites

with the privacy settings

that mean

no one can see them

ill-overheard

one am, noise of something spreading in the hallway

the run of carpet in my peephole is invisible beneath wadded newspaper, debris

two boys push an overturned bench through, in the posture of football drills, as if a snow plow

they say, that's all from my stuff

they say, that's a lot of paper

the next morning smells of mildew & ink, and the carpet is marbled with once-hygenic sundries -- band-aids, dental floss, razor blades -- like a dirtied ice slower to melt

two am, the girl in the next apartment is yelling in korean, on the phone i think, she tries it awhile then settles for sobbing or laughter, depending on the night and other complexities muffled by the walls i guess

three am, policemen are beating their fists on a door, PARTY'S OVER and WE'RE NOT ARRESTING YOU

my professor of mathematics entered and i think to be sure he had done this correctly, entered correctly, entered the one of all the rooms that would attend to & catalog his presence, to be sure he said my name, asked where that was, in the room, if this were the room, and passed sharply among faces with i think only the apprehension that each was inappropriate to his purpose

he saw me and when he saw me began class

it is flattering maybe, being an index to a memory, banally

how could i be that

i have another report

in my world hunger class a man in front of me looked on a very tiny computer at a blog in pictures of a man aiming many guns at faraway large white panels then pointing closely at the newly blossomed & dappled absences

how strange his doing exactly that then, in class, so particular, too particular, brazenly obscenely particular

once walking home through the strip mall and a man came from the liquor store with six packs bottomed of a long garbage bag and said how old are you boy

and i said 21 which sounds like a fake answer

and he said you better run off to school boy you like look you aint 15

and i cut through the grounds of an apartment complex for the retired

. . .

once walking home through the strip mall and a man came from the liquor store with six packs bottomed of a long garbage bag and smiled and we shook hands for longer than was probably okay

. . .

once walking home through the strip mall and a man came out with a six pack tied to a long piece of rope and he was dragging the six pack on the pavement and i said what are you doing

and he said combating 99.9% of bacteria

and i learned how and i never got sick again

when i talk grinning, i think i sound sarcastic

. . .

inadequate in conversations, want to say i cannot recall so finely / vividly / usefully as you, i feel ill-equipped to face & engage the forces that doom us universally, i cannot describe precisely or analyze let alone be engaged in redressing the feeling that i am 'fucked' but you cannot do that because then

• you are monopolizing all intellectual & affective product of the conversation
• you are effectively doing this by ending in uniform manner all conversations
• you are doing something you would not want to witness / participate in yourself
• therefore you are not helping anyone

. . .

i like when writers break as if inelegantly their description of phenomena into enumerated aspects, into lists which are wide ranging and also admittedly & necessarily incomplete. i feel they are being honest / open to perhaps irreducible complexity at all scales / not careless, insincere, or distracted in their present focus

not that this is the only way or even emblematic of the only ways to do that

'i like' is meant to imply that i am thinking about things that make me happy / may be smiling

feels difficult if not impossible to convey this / similar sentiments in casual to serious conversation due to fundamental limits of temporal expanse, linearity, and preoccupation

i said 'fundamental' that is stupid i don't know

'fundamental' means i am confused / possibly untenable

classes 'resume' monday. i am in classes of 12, 12, 35, 40, and 285 people. i am trying to arrange feelings of hopefulness / openness

i am staying up all night reading blogs and the first five to thirty pages i can get off amazon / barnes & noble / google of books i may be (and now am) interested in. i have read a todd hasak-lowy story, two chapters of anagrams by lorrie moore, pages of revolutionary road, and also a little of books i am not interested in

i laid on the couch and read all of shoplifting from american apparel. this feels like a book i will reread in isolated selections with ~ the same frequency / motivations as rearranging furniture. sam's several and ghost-like romantic / sexual bonds seem like 'fundamental types' or platonic solids, which are somehow elementary expressions of being 'fucked' and also opaque

i don't know i am losing control of what i mean

i think for the sake of having a stimulating & variegated inner life i need to describe precisely & record my feelings / reactions / feelings about reactions as close to having them as possible because otherwise

otherwise when i draw from these moments solely for later reflection i will be distorting the only extant copy, memories are one-time arrangements taken from a high shelf and always without exception always dropped & broken & cheerfully reassembled so that the thing put back is different & maybe cruder

memories are a small animal you accidentally asphyxiated then stuffed and pretended not to have

is that my experience i don't know is it shit

memories are a failure to have described precisely

memories are an amount of time you have left until you are 'fucked'

memories are not a heartbeat, forgetting is active, a preoccupation, and therefore a slight to honest open perception & reaction

gonna gonna gonna what is a blog for

best thing that hitting buttons did in a videogame

press 'A' to cough

press 'A' to not know what to do with your hands

press 'A' to go home, stand in shower but get out before turning on the water, dress, sleep in clothes

press 'A' to buy iced coffee, almost cry on bus

press 'A' to have memories, regret

press 'A' because you thought it was your turn, apologize

press 'A' to get a job

press 'A' to forget everybody's name

press 'A' to adopt a cat

press 'A' to start doing drugs

press 'A' to stop doing drugs

press 'A' to read too much

press 'A' to cry at work, apologize

press 'A' to meet people

press 'A' to never call

press 'A' to forget everything you read

press 'A' to move back home

press 'A' to inherit a lot of money

press 'A' to forget how you used to feel

press 'A' to feel lonely

press 'A' to donate to charities

press 'A' to buy a house

press 'A' to build a deck

press 'A' to walk around your empty house, dust, sit for hours in bay windows

press 'A' to visit people

press 'A' to live in a Holiday Inn for 3 weeks

press 'A' to buy an airplane

press 'A' to fly around the world, refuel in mid-air, never land

cellular phone capturing digital photographs

cellular phone playing digital recording of telephone bells ringing

cellular phone 'alarm clock function' playing digital recording of typical alarm clock sounds even though it is probably capable of producing the sounds in a manner considerably simpler

cellular phone playing digital recording of you saying something and being embarrassed as 'custom ringtone' up to five times before answering your call