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now i can’t go two weeks without shaving my fingernails or cutting my stubble. nor is my desire to wash all my clothes enough motive to wash all my clothes. i am speculating here: enough quarters will build up, and i will spend them on coffee, or mugwort. i have vivid dreams. i hate vivid dreams.
that was a lie.
i forget to remove my shoes when i come inside from outside and then i recall nobody else is here, nor ever here, who cares. i don’t even care. there are my fingernail clippings by the couch. i could make money picking them up for somebody else, but they are mine. i pinch them each. i’m like god, i swear to god.
i know this is temporary. i know thinking i’m going to die soon is just speculation and i ought not to take it seriously, my fear of jaywalking. my watching people watch themselves in mirrors has grown obsessive. possessive, even. i want to hear about a piglet born with those tiny arms snakes still have, that you can’t see. i would prefer if it happened in springfield, where i am positive pigs get born still.
life isn’t a circle, for the love of god, it’s itself. are we the only animal that waits, or that thinks when we wait, or that thinks it’s alone in waiting? maybe we’re really the only animals and the rest are all fucking aliens.
did you just concede that that’s possible? oh, the babe! oh, the pure, innocent child! i’m going to make you chicken soup when you get sick from believing me about that glass of plague water i said leonard nimoy drank out of. i’m sorry, genuinely sorry about that one. it’s a true story, i’m just what you’d call in russian “смердящий лгун.’” i knew i went too far.
do you know where pigs are born anymore? me either. i watched this movie, sweetgrass, about shepherds in montana. they’re born in montana- shepherds, sheep. watching it made me wish i knew shepherds from montana. if you are a montanan and work with sheep, my hat goes off to you. if you are not please email me a picture of the kind of hat you think i should take off to these fine hard-working people:
samvirzi (at) yahoo (dot) com
thank you. for your diligence. thank you.
back to what i was saying: i am making peace with waiting. it takes patience. i learned last year, when training to be a counselor at a summer camp for the fourth year in a row, that patience is a skill you have to practice. here’s what you do: lay in your bed, turn on your laptop, get online through a very unreliable internet connection, watch until anything changes in the world. by the end of the day you’ll be patient as fuck.
i have the cynical habit of thinking in other peoples’ voices when i see them look in mirrors, things like: “i bet if i had another job people would hug me more,” or “still there, oh thank god,” or “i know i can time travel, i just have to squeeze my ass a little tighter.”
know what i was thinking the other day? actually this was this morning. i just woke up on the air mattress i keep in case of guests, and i was on my way to my double bed in the other room. (i couldn’t remember any of my dreams, wanted another take.) i thought, if i can’t even dream anything powerful or original anymore, what’s the use trying to write stories? then i thought, what’s the matter with me that “power” and “originality” are the only values which motivate me? i have wondered if the only powerful or original statement writers my age ever will make is their desire to make powerful original statements. then i have gone to bed.
the bathroom’s on the way to my second bed. you can hear your voice echo in it. i say, “from the crawling of the ants… to the leaping of the antelope…”
