◄◄◄◄◄◄◄◄◄◄◄Fragments

I need more conversations. There were always a few close ones and we'd spend nights, hour on hour, improvising mental architecture, collaborating towards some platonic, sensual ordeal of interaction. The give and take. Trading roles in snakeskin revolutions. Getting lost in the mazes we build and laughing our way out, suddenly children filled with wonder at one another and ourselves.

No one's ever claimed I have a light touch. My hands sometimes feel elongated, as if I could cradle my head easily grasped in one. Rest it in the bowl of my palm. I know that I have effected the trajectory of these dear friends as much as mine has been so altered. Not in specific ways, not about any discrete decision, but broadly, suffused, the bones of the world laid by our pilgrimage.

Sunrise would surprise us. Hoarse and weary and giddy with satisfaction. We always part ways, to sleep.

I'm obsessing over "work," the space once occupied by daydreams crowded out by this thing that always pays but doesn't fulfill. Work has all the trappings of a dream. The inspirational hooks and melodies, the one five four.

But-

There is a qualitative factor I can't name. Mood, spirit, ethos, flavor, nothing quite works. Work is always less enjoyable than play, maybe defined by that difference alone. Surface tension between worlds. I don't want my working life to influence my playing life at all. Of course, of course, impossible.

So, I won't write about my day. You'll rarely read narrated events, and when you do they'll be mostly fiction. Truths are always coincidences. I continue to obsess over single lines of text, while others(most!) happen of their own accord.

So this! This. Must be enough. Cut free, as much as it can be.

I! And the fruit of my labors, concede. None of

will work, doesn't have to, shouldn't even. Here in this small room. Through a door L. sleeps with the small fan on, white noise. Faint rush of the propane heater. I wander absently, with great purpose, towards the screen's promises. My uncomfortable chair fits my uncomfortable

self winningly. The furniture is repurposed, dinner table and chairs enslaved by the appliances. Interior decoration bowed to Appliance, so, they Applied themselves vigorously. You your companionship, business. Rumors of high promotions and even Appliances call the shots in a few edgier operations. Yeah... Ok what is that? I don't specifically remember writing it, though it's obviously mine. Could delete it. But, this is't supposed to be a

heavily edited exercise, this bloggery thing. I know what I was trying to describe and am presented with the images intended in the writing. But the description is personal, because I was writing for myself. I guess that works. Writing only for oneself opens strange doors in the mind. The write

r tries to trick himself, gnaws on subtlety like a badger on a face. Self deception is easy, not a tall task at all. It comes easily to us because we have a lot of practice. It's sort of what we do. Without deception we don't exist. I feel like someone is playing a joke with my(Everyone's?) life, but we haven't gotten to the laughter phase. Pre punchline.

It's a joke that I know I am incapable of ever understanding, a joke I can't laugh at without choking. Every thought is a potential revolution. There are gods, and we are their children, born at their intersections, nursed on their prudence, and injured by their conflicts.

We are fundamentally unable to know them. The unconscious is not filled with ghosts and demons, things that we find often enough outside. It's filled with the vast majority of ourselves. The nub of consciousness hangs as a wriggling appendage from the rest of our dark bulk. "What's going on in there?" "Well. Like I said, I can't get the joke. There's no way to understand. I don't mean it's too difficult or anything like that.

The problem is that for you to understand all that," he gestures to the black rings orbiting them a few thousand kilometers out, "You wouldn't be you anymore. Being intimately conscious of the processes and interactions that create your experience of consciousness... would evaporate you.

" The Questioner stares up at the rings. "They haven't evaporated." "There is no they! You still don't get it.

Listen,
you don't have a map for this. Those things you're looking at aren't even what you think. Rings? Last guy saw dice bouncing around. Someone else saw angels, ok? You don't even have a visual handle on it! Can't see it, not what it actually is. So it dials back for you and substitutes." "I'm going in." "Fine. Assuming you've come prepared?" "Medical team, private hospital wing. Twenty years of life support. Constant physical therapy." "And after twenty years?" "Game over man, but I'll be up before then." "

I don't like this person I become sometimes: At work, in official situations, in transactions. I detest the facade, but have come to love the game. Honesty always barbed. First thing is to find out what someone wants from you. Not in a material sense! Most people I meet want their expectations broken in small ways, providing novelty without threat. They are the simpler set, as almost any mild eccentricity will do. Rouse interest, then provide positive reinforcement and project confidence. The more rigid people don't want their expectations broken. With these, identifying what those expectations are and exceeding them according to their own internal standards works best. Overall, a genial and conscientious demeanor, hints of friendly subversiveness.

The best complaint I've had is rather ambiguous. "We... have no idea what to think about you." Of course, quite happy with that.

Why can't you just be yourself, be natural?

I am. Always. But what you're really asking of me is to be unaware of the processes driving behavior. Every interaction is calculated in some way, whether you're party to it or not. This truth makes people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. The facade is mandatory, freedom is forgetting.

I'm not that grim, not really. I enjoy... all this. Love it. Relish. Sometimes.

Because people can align, they can fit so perfectly with each other that their masks dissolve. Sublimity. For a moment, forever, through any sense, even the smoke signals of writing. Is that what I clumsily attempt to reach? Using all the wrong tools, chasing the unquantifiable with a calculator? It's ok. One good conversation is worth it.