again these are all

again these are often very rough...not meant to be final revisions. one or two i have begun to polish but a lot of this no. but it is doing me good to go ahead and put them up, even if you're too busy to come in, knowing that you will be coming in eventually.

blondie vs darky 4 & 5

4.

Passing foodstuffs to the birds in the park perhaps pigeons most likely pigeons though you refuse to define anything categorically as though that were an insult to dignity beneath dignity to be so named yet they do show all the signs these birds they enjoy the grilled cheese sandwiches and even bits of beef from hamburgers which you chronically order and then refuse to eat as the burgers at this diner are so unpleasant the meat dried and hard and tough like dried sponges

Sitting in the park the air is cold around you and also through you feels as though you are not there but perhaps are a medium or conduit that does not stand but to stand aside observing cold moving through you like a crowd of pedestrians moving throughout the city moving upon their way in none too much hurry but absorbed in their own lives

5.

He woke this morning and did not look at you but began putting on his boots which you watched silently smally feeling small curled up naked and insubstantial among the bedclothes feeling particularly naked in fact watching him put on his boots and then remember he did not have his pants on yet and therefore grumpily moving to take the boots off again sighing weary unable to summon the energy to remove the boots which are overly tight for they are not his boots and you can see inside his head and know what sort of experience he is having decaffeinated devitaminized denurtured bleak bleary a tiredness you know of not ever having had it yourself but knowing it through him and perhaps through others before though you’ve forgotten all else about them but this feeling which invariably makes you weepy makes the world seem suddenly worth living in again

He pulls on the boots realizes he does not have his pants on sighs leans back onto the bed which lacks sheets now for they are coiled around your diminutive figure he lies back to take the boots off which because they are cowboy boots requires some effort which he halfheartedly puts his thumbs to before lying back again no longer trying about to try lying there again for fifteen minutes or perhaps it only feels to him or you like fifteen minutes the swirling of the dust eddies in the November daylight warm inside this warehouse warm from radiators rendering this desperation lovely, how lucky he is to have his boots on you think you feel it is almost enough to bring tears to you you can feel them down below surge the suggestion of tears which you have not had in many years though it feels it may be that you had them recently and have only forgotten them as you forget everything else forget all but sensations the content without the vessel the feelings without circumstances you have no tears to show but something tugs at you and you wish you knew what though the sensation is lovely even magical

To backtrack he lies back on the bed on the raw mattress unclothed but for boots and eventually does not pull off his boots he has not the energy for this one can see easily in his body lying there so sickly in its way, healthy to all appearances sickly perhaps merely in that it is missing its inhabiting ghost sickly healthy healthy sickly he is a strong man lean his muscles are wiry so to speak to borrow the familiar phrase though slender they are merely slight because of his genes and are capable of perhaps more than muscles this size ought to be they are lean rippling across his stomach as he breathes and the ghost in his flesh is so pale as pale as the skin above it is winter after all nor was he ever an outdoor type nor is it that his muscles are so well-developed but rather he is lean he is efficient you can feel this about him and perhaps it is something to love perhaps nothing to pay attention to but he is part of the afternoon making you cry or not cry rather but contemplate what it would be like to cry and enjoying your thoughts which do have a flavor full down in your chest as peculiar as a late afternoon or musty old glass of wine

Feeling your glance he stands angry possessed of an energy at last at least and walks pantless through the warehouse to the far side where he will begin to brew himself a pot of coffee shuffling through the motions the pouring of water the scooping of grounds into the paper filter in a way that denotes pain the pain of touching objects and stands back to you for a full five minutes as the water gains heat and momentum and the sound of steam bursting comes to you from across the warehouse and you are feeling so erotic in yourself and your naked body that you don’t feel you can stand it and how can he not know it and if he did would he not walk over and take you now and it would be welcome no matter what he felt if it were in anger or whatever he would call his feeling because he of course is the last to know what it is, she even knows what he feels before he does and even if he calls it one thing one day its cumulative effect in him may be something quite to the contrary

Touch her again that is he would touch her her skin is white mottled a bit she thinks and with too many small scabs and sores perhaps of the kind that other people have she is not sure he has similar abrasions she knows from staring at his back nights her fingers moving over them without touching tracing patterns imagining the intimacy of scraping those sores from his body streamlining him in that way for it seems it could be done with him and not with her which is strange perhaps since he is a man and she a woman she is the one who ought to have the soft skin but her sores are part of her body and she could not relinquish them in theory yes she could bathe well with good soaps and tend her skin but it is a possibility only and an impossible one where he is all potential and no reality, his skin it is easy to imagine smooth Greek marblelike it is easy to imagine the muscles grouped under the skin become strong rounded finally become their own shape moving into place with him it seems so easy despite even because of his momentum perhaps because she does not think of him as real which has always been her problem her issue she knows he is intangible she could stab him just as easily as imagine him perfected she thinks because the deed would accomplish nothing, he is something that always will be that exists forever even as everything else in this apartment at this moment will even long after he is dead which also is not hard to imagine

Pours his coffee and the effort in it pains her he should come over and take her now if he had any idea what was good for him or her even, she is ready to lie down, delicately wet.

He is sipping coffee now across the room staring at his walls re-centered now apparently and across the room from her he stands erect and awake.

blondie vs darky 3

3.

you spend days alone on the park bench tossing the birds bread and meat stolen from the corner diner where you have so often run out on your check, though you have also overpaid many times or left money when you ordered nothing (though you did linger in the booth for hours pretending to make up your mind, reading the menu with different approaches and degrees of attention) so that you hope eventually your payment and unpayment even out. From what you can tell it doesn’t seem to bother the waiter who is always the same though he never looks you in the face anymore (perhaps he looked you in the face originally with a stab of curiosity (though curiosity is so quickly extinguished these days the more so when the unpredictable is involved)) he now though does not look at you especially because you are short and girlish like a child; though you are by no means young depending on what young means and though you feel that like a child you elude the adult radar as it were; by leaving the restaurant without paying you are being no more than a child, unpredictable as a child, too young to have consistency demanded of you, perhaps he considers it that you have never left at all left per se, left in a permanent way that is, always in the process of entering as much as of leaving. but rather it is all a matter of whim on your part, tedious for him perhaps yet he rolls with it, lets you come and go, greases the revolving door knowing it is no more than whim on your part, you are an impulsive child) and perhaps he is right, you are not sure yourself of your age, and though you are say (let’s say for argument though you have no way of knowing this yourself with any certainty) let’s say you are in your thirties let’s just say, only because you like people in their thirties and perhaps you identify with them more than with other age groups (of which there are sadly too many) though in fact you don’t identify with people in their thirties at all, any more than the others, they being engaged in activities and concerns so different from your own, but enough of this chatter, you may for all you know be a child in fact so let us for argument's sake say this is so and that he may be right to treat you as such by never looking at you his gaze always fanning out over your head so that you feel you could sit and watch him and that he might simply freeze there standing over your table, ask you what you would like to eat, his politeness never failing, rude as you are to him. +++He sets the water down before you in the usual way careful not to leave a trail of water over the formica table as other waiters are wont to do though at the moment it is hard to remember ever having had a waiter other than this one, this handsome if sallow one, middle-aged perhaps, his face showing age and perhaps wisdom, +++ a certain maturity at least the sort of face that grows more handsome with age no doubt, his having been nondescript in youth handsome but not enough to be noticed, neutral hair neither blond nor brown, potential for great form, perhaps a noble structure under skin but possessed of too much baby and indolence fat for the angles to show through, he not being one to exert effort toward a goal or even toward having a goal which is why no doubt he is now a waiter; youth and ambition were lost on him when he was young so that he is your opposite the unchild never having been young enough as a boy to be a boy, adulthood claiming him as its own at last, a drab sort of adulthood it’s true but adulthood nonetheless, one must give acknowledgment where it is due. Adulthood claimed him and bestowed upon him those qualities that ultimately perhaps he deserved, haggardness taking the place of exercise in revealing the form in the face the angles a certain chiseledness an aquiline profile, round glasses making more handsome his eyes that would no doubt be nondescript, and his adultly boredom which suits him better than his youthful confusion. No doubt this faraway expression of his as he waits on you perhaps not an expression of wisdom but merely one originating in boredom a profound kind of boredom nevertheless reached with the full heart the full soul earned as it were though without effort only by being what he is.

Enough of this drivel though we get the idea let’s go on rather as we were talking about his gaze over you not that it’s particularly interesting but it is part of the story nonetheless and must be told though the story itself need not be told at all it’s true still once it’s begun one must do it properly tell it for itself as itself for what it is which at this moment concerns how that gaze of his that bored gaze forms a plane over your head, under which you apparently can travel freely coming and going as though it were a shelter (from what rain you don't know but a shelter nonetheless) so that you can put down your food in mid bite and leave the café to wander for hours for no other reason than to prove to yourself and to the waiter that you can, coming back to see what’s been done in your absence finding to your own childish horror and rage that your table has been cleared and wiped and reset and there is even a family at the table or perhaps a professor over an obsolete laptop scrutinizing a manuscript so that in rage you approach the waiter who neither looking at you nor speaking disappears into the back of the restaurant and reemerges with a brown paper bag hands to you which you grab with self-righteous ire and take to the front stoop not deigning to eat at the lunch counter though he has chivalrously or perhaps merely automatically pulled a stool back for you (was that a sigh he made) which you refuse, you take your bag to the front stoop and sit so that you block ingress of patrons until one rudely grabs you by the shoulders and lifts you and sets you to one side as if you were a mannequin, a sensation you rather enjoy noting that gravity does not affect you, your limbs do not bend midair you open your bag to find your lunch carefully foil-wrapped which despite your wishes lights a warmth in your belly so that you do eat a bit of it after all before throwing the rest of it away

Or in this case (to bring us out of our long digression) you do not throw it away at all but take it the long block to the park and cast your sandwich to the pigeons first as a whole sandwich without tearing, then after noticing little pigeon interest you pick it up and toss it again in pieces albeit pieces too large for them to manage so that they fight each other for chances to tug at your indigestible diner food as inwardly peacefully you seek to define your relationship with him your lover or whatever he is. It’s an adult activity, it seems to you to define adulthood perhaps that is why you enjoy it you have spent many days happily at it without success or anything else redeeming except for the pleasure that knots of worry at the pit of your stomach can bring you, wan pleasure to be sure but of a cutting blooded kind that reaffirms you have bowels left still to wrack unmercifully

Upon reflection it may be that you don’t know him in fact though standing in the way of this idea it would seem is the fact (apparent) that you have lived with him for three years a thousand days many of which you did not see him and perhaps were in another place another city in fact it’s difficult to say for cities seem all the same to you now though it is difficult to travel having no car or money so that most likely it was this city where you have lived so long that you would guess if provoked (though there is no telling for certain for it bears no familiarity but this is foolish for we need not clarify all inclarities merely for the sake of argument or accountability, accountability to whom?) so let us say then that you were in this city perhaps let’s say as a compromise in another part of it one you would not recognize we will be benevolent to you and your inadequate memory there are many parts of the city you don’t recognize perhaps for never having been there and no sooner do you pass from one part to another than the one you passed from changes and it is difficult to take for granted that where you sit now was where you sat yesterday…

In this manner then you establish that he may or may not be your lover. it would certainly help to ascertain this fact (help what) though it’s difficult to say. you must first decide why you care whether he is your lover it can only be from hate that you would choose to tether him so with such names spend such time wanting such definition greed perhaps impurity of heart

service in back

then the woman moves aside grin on her face she is happy to see him they go back to the back talk awhile she ends up throwing a glass of water at his face goes out front walks to the gallery starts conversation with hot dog vendor. Or tries. Returning she takes a man in back and services him while the other guy talks, they are talking about lunch, then after he is about done, she stops, the client says hey what are you doing, I’m almost there, she motions the other guy over, the other guy goes down on him, the man says I didn’t pay for this, you want to get off don’t you? she says I can’t hold a conversation with that thing in my mouth, you'll get off, sit still, you’re not getting your money back, anyway he’s better than I am, Oh yes, the guy says, ...maybe so... I’m not gay the man going down on him says, so she keeps talking says hey what if we have a picnic, I haven’t had one in awhile, go to central park, I can wear a little gingham dress, do you know what that is, I think that’s what people wear to picnics, it’s what they wore in the fifties anyway, or was it the great depression? Sounds lovely the client says the woman starts to make out with him then says hey here is a flyer for a show my friend is in, just take it so I can say I gave it away, I might be there, come hang out if you want, the man going down is getting rough, he keeps going, the client says whoa stop! but he keeps going harder and harder, hey! The man says stop it oh shit he has come and now it is an unbearable feeling, the man has him held down to the chair so he has to struggle violently to be free. he jumps up and stands up oh shit and the other guy says I always wondered what would happen if someone just kept going. I’ve tried that with you says the girl yes but I’m stronger than you and I can get away. I didn’t like that says the man.

blondie vs darky 1 & 2

1.

When he sees you he acts as though he has never seen you before, you with whom he spent at least a thousand nights, even if he never wanted you on that bare floor-bound mattress of his, even if in fact it was merely accident that you were there and you both unconsciously tried not to touch each other (you less than he, a slide of armskin against the lightly-haired hollow of his back would have been acceptable for example), or perhaps consciously, though each of you for different reasons, he perhaps because of loathing or because of emotional damage, you have this much sympathy for him, he may be damaged, he may have been crushed or bent when he was a tender young shoot, there is often a peculiar look in his eye, especially when he regards you or rather does not regard you but fixes on a spot just past you on the wall or counter or windowpane or a book. He is tall, lanky, as perpetually disheveled as his bed, in which you often wake up finding the single sheet (patterned oddly with screen prints of gaily-calligraphed vegetables) wrapped tightly around your leg, your face abraded by the polyester mesh of the mattress so that you have a raspberryish chafing on one white cheek through most days, under your gray sleepless eyes; nevertheless you would not change this dishevelment of his, though you are naturally one who would require neatness at the least of any good friend, at the very least, care of appearance, hypocritical of yourself perhaps for your own appearance is wan you know, your single black dress is shoulder-bleached from time under the sun, and there is also a white nickel-sized stain of birdshit that did not wash out you let it stay there so long, still you keep your dark hair pulled down tight on each side, you do not own a comb but your palm saliva-wettened like a cat’s will slick down the flyaway hairs, and your part is an overly white rut in your dark hair, carved meticulously with a twig or coffee-stirrer, whatever is at hand; so that your appearance is bizarrely neat perhaps, nothing that radiates health or style but neat at least, maybe because you are uncertain as to any other criteria by which to judge your own appearance and therefore others’, for the absence of judgment itself makes you crazy, and if you are uncertain as to whether your judgment is in any way valuable, that in itself does not diminish the pleasure you get from rendering a firm, final judgment, reassuring as a tuffet at fireside.


2. (unrevised)

You find yourself often wishing you did not care for him and are not even certain that you do care for him, it may be that you do not for you are not familiar with caring, you have never found space for caring in your busy life, or rather you have cared for many people before, and deeply, but all of it crumbled, you don’t remember names, faces either, you do remember faces but you cannot be certain which person was which and whether they were in fact lovers or perhaps a plumber who came once to remove hair clogs from the sink at whoever’s apartment you were then squatting in, with or without them knowing (you do not remember a plumber but that does not mean there wasn’t one), , do not remember if they were a plumber or a face that fascinated you on the street one evening in central park or one with whom you shared a bed as with this man of the moment who will remain nameless for the moment because you do prefer things nameless for the moment it is more convenient, efficient, efficient to what end you are not sure, yet there is a relief in efficiency; it also may be of course you do not know his name, perhaps that was overlooked and you are far past that now, embarrassing to ask, unnecessary too. perhaps it is easier to blend his face in with the others and again to forget (is he lover or brother or friend, each n intriguing possibility, as with these others you have cared for, already you can’t remember), though perhaps you did not care for any of these past figures, perhaps it was something else you had with them, something other than love.

horror films

am watching a thai (I think) horror film (a bad one) called "The Eye", which was popular a few years ago. I like the idea of vision in horror movies, things you can barely see. I wouldn't mind writing a horror film, even quickly, trying to get it made quickly and cheaply.

1. something about peripheral vision, or things barely seen. the idea that there is an Other Side that co-exists with ours, in the same space, like an invisible screen over us...we feel things from it but have no idea what it is we're feeling; we are suddenly sad, or happy, or grumpy, but interpret it as having something to do with our own world.

but someone for some reason or other has just enough "gift" or whatever to begin seeing the faintest traces of the other side. the other side appears then like a manifestation of the unconscious, of dreams...nightmarish...but you have to hunt for the traces to see them in the image. they shock him when he finally notices. it may be that someone begins looking different, their face bears traces of some emotion they either don't have, or don't know they have. it may be that a face appears where it ought not, in the background, in the bookshelf. the fear of the unconscious. things appear constantly in places where you are not looking, causing the viewer to examine the frame. it becomes more and more, perhaps alerts her to something happening under the surface that no one would think in their right mind, but which your unconscious would scream...some sort of malevolent consciousness...that of a person? something supernatural?

another dimension in which there is both benevolence but especially malevolence, interfering, interacting with ours in some way, so that when he begins to perceive it is is experienced as a warping of perception of our own, distortion, the intrusion of nightmares into our world, strange things that ought not to be there, signs of another intelligence or reality that makes no sense coupled with our own. a face lookikng out of a bookshelf, a face of horror, no explanation...

and this person who has this gift is cynical about other realms, is more ready to think he or she is crazy than to believe in this, but the visions somehow seem to presage things that happen, or comment on them...faces that appear around a kid who appears to be happy, for instance, but who has secret horror, who ODs from drugs soon, or runs away and is killed by whoever he runs away with, for instance....the hero has visions around this, which couple with his instinct that the kid has a terrible relationship with his parents but which as per social convention is made to seem fine on the surface, so that it is just instinct that makes hero think something's uneasy there...and then the signs, the visions, the horrors he sees happening, which in a way tell the truth...

so that he learns to trust his instincts, which is difficult for him because it means at the same time learning to trust these insane visions. and he does not have the leisure to ignore them because they seem to imply responsibility, he needs to talk to people, he sees some vision about a person, there is no telling whether it means something horriible will happen to them, like being hit by a train, or just something that they will never show anyone else, a private decision, so that he doesn't know how to talk to them...

this is playing into the horror convention of The Eye, in which she sees things that ought not to be there. it's especially effective at the beginning when she has just had her corneal transplants, so that everything is out of focus. you see what she sees, and you know something is there that ought not, but you can't tell what because it's out of focus, which makes it so much scarier than when she does get focus - also because she doesn't know she is seeing something she ought not to see, because she can't tell what it is. I think this is how this must start with my hero, that in some way the things he/she sees she can't tell at first are not there, it's something wrong, something distorted, but subtle, surprising, only later getting worse.

a common horror convention, as i was saying, the idea of seeing something that overlays our reality - like in The Ring, when they have distorted photos of themselves, or in the Omen, when there are photos of people with little slight lines on them, just before they die.

i wonder if it stems off of sleeping and dreaming, because this is another similar conceit that's interesting to me, that period between sleeping and waking when you may dream but it's like daydreaming, it bleeds in with what you see in reality...so that there is this dimension, you think you were just dreaming. maybe not relevant here, maybe it needs to be its own idea, but i like it. then there would be something first about staying awake (much like Nightmare on Elm Street, I guess), then perhaps about going to sleep. Hmm this is too similar to nightmare on elm street, perhaps, would have to be made diffierent for sure.

related to this then is the idea of peripheral vision - that things you don't realize you're seeing til you discover them by yourself are sometimes the scariest. in the exorcist III there are a number of scenes that play on this, where you are supposed to be watching someone talk and then eventually you realize that in the background something is missing that indicates that someone else is dead...

sleepwalking....the space between sleep and waking...many people report seeing ghosts just before they fall asleep, when they are in that dream state. so it could be that this state is only dreaming or, for the sake of the movie, somehow halfway between two worlds. and certainly it is in truth halfway between the conscious and unconscious world but in this case it would mean something with more metaphysical significance. only when you are falling asleep, just asleep before really falling deep into sleep, do these things appear to you. there is a message there. you don't know what it is, you are scared to go to sleep.

makes me remember an idea i had recently about falling asleep and seeing dad, but dead...sleepwalking, feeling it was real, that i hadn't fallen asleep, going outside, seeing dad, but he was not himself, was something foreign, not human...to make a horror film about this, play up the reality of it somehow, that it is more than just a dreamworld, something more directly connected with what's going on awake, views into an alternate world that somehow affects what happens in the world we see...and it's all different from what we think...

i am so antsy...had a day off today, still have it, and have been unable to bring myself to do anything, to leave the house. should write, want to do something, accomplish something, why do i work so hard to prevent myself from doing those things?

i am not putting up those two texts as meant to be what i like best of what i've written, not at all, but just the first two things that came to hand. i pulled about 30 pages of stuff out of my notebooks that i could post here now...though i won't.

i frustrate myself with my pathological avoidance of work.

intent to harm

On the subway home from work she is stared at by a man who she feels wishes to harm her. There is a murderous grin stretched over-wide on his face, and he stares only, directly, at her. He is clad all in black and his face is inhumanly pale and she feels violence in his knuckly hands which reach out as though taking hold of her throat. Strangely he seems invisible to the others on the subway except one man with headphones who gradually notices this man of threat, follows the gaze of the man blankly to her, registers her, looks back at the man of threat and his gaunt fingertips clutching at the air, and returns his gaze to a spot on the floor, the better to listen to whatever it was he was listening to, moving his lips a bit - perhaps to show anyone who might be watching (her) that he is thoroughly absorbed, possibly memorizing a language or learning business principles.

The man with intent to harm though continues to grin and stare, a spot of saliva spilling past the corner of his mouth. His teeth are like sharpened slats of a white picket fence, only downward (all downward), set in black gums, and his eyes are rimmed with black.Yet the woman is surprised to find that she feels no threat. She has a difficult time registering this man as a threat, that is; the man clearly desires her harm; the saliva is now drooling into the whisker-fields of his unshaven cheek, his corroded nails are sharp, and automatically she thinks "i need to consider my escape options." It is difficult however to act on this thought, to feel any urgency about it, because she simply cannot feel the threat. Perhaps she is optimistic, she thinks, innately expecting the best of people, of life - it may also be her own lack of imagination, she considers - but simply put, despite his appearance, no picture comes to mind to suggest what he could in fact do to her; a frightening figure, but what could he do? she pauses for thought, yet nothing arises in her mind, pause as she might; she is in the subway as always, her heels hurt even in her new running shoes, the man next to her smells improbably of pine cones; she is safe, she is at a loss as to how someone could hurt her. In fact she has a knife in her pocket, a large bowie knife with which she is fairly handy, having gutted animals with it before, but the knife doesn't really factor, for it is impossible to imagine the use of it on this man - pulling it from its sheath, brandishing it, swinging it smoothly up under his ribcage which with his current hand position he has left quite vulnerable - the man, by the way, is constantly elbowing his way past people who do not seem to see him yet unconsciously move aside to let him pass, as a river parts for a fish's swim...though somehow he still manages to be no closer than he was a moment ago, unless her sense of distance deceives her. It is as impossible to imagine herself defending herself as it is to imagine him harming her, of there having any other posture with each other than what they form right now. Again she recognizes the distinct possibility that there may be a deficit in her imagination, that this blankness of vision could indeed be a character flaw that might cause her to misstep someday, if not now; but after all one must listen to instinct, and for the moment she feels simply unengaged, sure that the greater danger is that this man, whose skin is as doughy and deeply wrinkled as an elephant's, might turn out merely to be a bore in the end.

At any rate, there is such a long way for the man to travel before he reaches her, especially given his current progress (though it may be that he is closer than he appears); he still has to come all the way across the subway car, and then even when she has disembarked she will still be a long way from home yet, a great distance that he must traverse with her, negotiating one more subway change and then a walk around the corner and up the street, jagging over across a median (negotiating traffic) to a grocery store – each of these things would seem to set him back severely – and then once in the store there are the cans of sweet corn and pimientos she must buy (she doesn’t even know where the pimientos are, though she assumes with the canned vegetables), also buying fruit, of what kind she is not sure but a large quantity indeed for she has promised she will begin making healthier meals for herself and will start simply, with fruit, a fruit salad perhaps with honey and coconut shavings, not because she likes coconut but because she has a friend experienced in dieting matters who incorporates coconut shavings into almost everything she makes, this salad being a recipe borrowed from her, though she can't remember what is in the salad besides coconut and, of course, fruit; not the corn and pimientos of course, which are bought by sheer instinct, she has no purpose for them yet but trusts that it will come. Lord only knows though how long it will take to pick out the fruit, weigh it, bag it, it feels endless to contemplate ahead of time, and she isn’t sure how the man of threat could recover from this delay. In fact it is difficult to believe that she will ever get home, possibly even leave this subway car; but if she does, even after the grocer it is still quite a distance to her apartment, two blocks eastward to the intersection where she must turn north before turning east again to her own street, where she must walk north again a half block to reach her apartment building. It is also reassuring to think that even if her life were scheduled to end now - which she must objectively acknowledge it might be, given the drooling eagerness of the man edging his way nearer to her all the time, hands twitching, palms white and dry - there is still also enough scheduled for her that there is much richness to look forward to, this walk that it seems likely could never end...if she wants to defeat death himself, she thinks, even if this man were to stab her in the neck (or whatever, she really can't imagine how he might kill her here, on the subway), all that would be required would be for her to begin this walk toward her house, toward the groceries, a mission of such detail and realness that its very richness would render death itself invisible as sun erases a shadow.

The man, by the way, to keep current, though somehow no closer than before, is nevertheless by now at her throat, he stands by her hands silent and immobile raised inches from her neck, fluttering with desire like deathly butterflies. There is something dry and dusty about him, she wants to bush off his shoulder though she is pretending for manners sake that he is not there, noticing despite herself that he is strangely odorless, his eyes dark-socketed under his top hat from which two tufts of strawlike hair jut down and outward to either side of his thumblike head. His hands, though now gloved, to keep up-to-date, still reach for her throat, continue to reach. There is much to say about the reaching, but more than anything it is important to notice that while apparently static they continue to reach and reach, consumed with reaching, every instant half as close to her naked throat as they were the instant before, while she looks politely down at her book, finds she is reading the same page over and over, looks out the window at concrete walls speeding by, she reads posters, notices and immediately forgets the station names, while (eyes ridiculously ribboned with tiny red veins around the corners) he reaches toward her beautiful throat which under his hands’ shadow is white, elegant, the musculature developed but fine, the curve under the chin immaculate, dusted with a fine layer of soot from the commute, as if representing a spiritual residue from a discouraging day at work that she at length will soak off in a leisurely bath (if she ever reaches home) - a fine, aristocratic throat, a throat to emulate. (Her clothing style too it must be said is attractive: simple, elegant, dark with a slight severity offset by the cashmere of the sweater under the long coat which warms her appearance just properly, gives her a touch of the fields.)

And then she is off the subway and jockeying happily through the mob of people fighting to get on the subway car, there is now the station to navigate and she dives into it joyously, only half-conscious in her purpose of the man making after her single-mindedly, if in fact there is a mind rather than a simple center of hate…

ok going to post

ok going to post...i have a lot to put up here, don't feel obliged to read it all at once.

though perhaps I will start with only one or two things.

most of what i post will be extracted from my laptop "notebook" file I write in almost every day, usually stream-of-consciousness. i may or may not revise it before posting. i'll try to, but there's a good chance that what you read may be yet to get cleaned up or polished...may have vague or clumsy language, etc.

can i suggest that general conversational messages ALL be separate posts, and that we only make "comments" when we're responding to work?

been slow to post but this is because i've been shooting nonstop long days and haven't written much the last few weeks. first real day off today...meant to get to it but had to do a few other things. tomorrow then it's my goal.

intro

vvv

so: not time yet to add anything creative to the blog, though I've written some things I could post. am leaving for a travel show tomorrow AM so need to do all that, am doing this quickly though because I do want to get it started.

I suggest that what we do is to POST things like general comments (like this) or stories or other writings, and then respond to writings and stories as comments on each story. That is, if you post a story, and I comment on it, instead of making a new equivalent post as my response, I'll attach a "comment" to your post, so it will be attached. otherwise I think it will get confusing.

I should have internet access from FL, though be working 12 hr days too, so less time to add. I do have some stuff I want to put up though.

b