6.30

Today, I let all the air out of my lungs and sank to the lakebed, five feet down. I had my eyes closed, and couldn't see anything beautiful. My ears were full of the rushing of blood and nothing else came through. My senses were numbed by the cold water and the weightlessness, and I sat there just long enough for panic to grip me. It didn't take long.
I rushed to the surface for air, heedless of how strange I must look to the fish and the birds and the trees, who never exchange one gasp for another. Only the newts looked on, understanding.

6.21b

Have you ever had enough time to depersonalize a person's face? Sometimes, with some people, it can take hours. How much of a person are they? How often do they use their face? Do you know them well? Is there not much material to work with?
With other people, at other times, the effect is immediate. I see the hard edge of her lip, where frenum meets vermilion, as though the two angles met and have never quite agreed after that. I see the roundness of glasses not as a style choice but only as geometry. I see, but of course, I don't.
I'm not looking at her; she's not there yet. I have to put her back together from my face-blindness so I have a friend again to meet.

6.21

IiiiiiiiIIiiiIIIiiiiii
lllllLlLLllLlllllLll
IiIIIIiiIiiiiIiiIiiIIi

6.17

The twisted tightrope that we walk between idiocy and suavity is wound with bundled wires no thicker than a mistake made while trying to compliment your hair or feet or breasts. You say the right thing to me and then I confuse myself two ways backwards and inside out just trying to consider whether or not you're interested in a compliment of your compliment or a compliment of yourself. I should come with an instruction manual, but I guess I still wouldn't read it.

6.16

[For the next time you trounce someone at chess:]

A knight hops around in an ell,
A bishop moves diagonell.
For straight lines and things,
You can try pawns and kings,
But that's checkmate as you know full well.

6.15

MAGG13 was named with numbers because Androids shouldn't have human names. Her mesh fiber skin wasn't the pale blood-through-collagen color of a white human, but the smooth, perfect white of a toilet. Sometimes, MAGG13 wondered about what her human friends must think of her. Sometimes, she turned off her subroutines and and didn't wonder at all.

6.12

Terrance liked the taste of grass after it had been aerosolized by cleated feet. He liked the sound of a crowd muffled into incoherence by a helmet. He liked football, just not, exactly, playing it. 

6.10

[As I face day four of the ten-day sprint of sustained creative effort between now and the start of summer camp, I am forced to ask myself why I find solace from creativity on this blog. Why do I keep running here to avoid my responsibilities?]

Cats wreck thatch.
Claws rasp 'till they're
    cut, rough tools.

[I like thinking about where we make sounds in our mouths. I like thinking about the sounds in this poem move forward in the mouth like they're being pushed from behind. I like thinking about how this poem would be ruined for non-rhotic extremists. It would be ruined for Jonathan Ross.]

6.9

6.8

I remember when I introduced you to my soul. So casual, "Say, have you met . . . ?" The bits of my bones were rattling around as you shook hands. I sat on the lid of myself, afraid I would jump out too much too fast. Soul and self are not so different, but meeting one, then meeting two: this is a new thing much too dangerous. Perhaps I'll keep him locked away. Yes, actually, I think so. Lock him up in bigger boxes so he has some room to move. Yes, yes, this is the right idea, I think.
Where has he gone? Where have you gone?
Ah, shit. My soul has run away with you.

6.7

Think about the tremendous number of things that have to be just so for an evening with this light, airy breeze. Think about the staggering coincidence of two people meeting in just this way. Think about the enormous unlikelihood of the cascading chemical reaction falling, inevitably, through both our brains. Just think: all this could be manufactured, for only $699 a month, or a yearly cost of only $6,999. Our neural self-authorship programs are available to anyone with a cybernetic implant of model 3 or newer. All this could be yours! Just think.

Offer is available for a limited time. Individual results may vary; use all implants with caution. Self-authorship is not guaranteed to have no real-world effects. Use all self-authorship devices with caution. Just think.

6.4

I read some Seamus Heaney Beowulf tonight. His translation feels somehow ancient new, a kind of word accident that could only have been carefully planned.
I feel that way about my favorite translation of Catulus 85, which isn't one of the famous ones, and I can never remember who translated it.

Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris. Nesciō, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.

I hate her and I love her. Don't ask me why. It's how I feel, that's all, and it hurts.

Maybe that's how Grendal felt about his mother, too. But there's no way to find out for sure.

6.2

She was no taller than a martini shaker.
She had a face like a Bentley's grille.
Her silver legs were a money-maker;
I'll tell you when I've had my fill.

I am made of piss and lightning.
More disappointment here than thrill.
When she's around, I feel the tightening
of my fear; too tight to kill.

The muse I mean is a gilded fever.
Her skin feels like a dollar bill.
I tell her I can love whenever (
A promise that I won't fulfill.
)