successfully; she found it hard to fully accept and conceive of within herself even a small amount of the implications of thinking these things for even a few people that have lived when thinking about people and the changes as time has passed over years—wondering what it would mean if she could know all of the implications for all people who have lived. Through the struggle with all of this, she began considering how the reality of her life compared to those before her and how hard it can be for some. She then also thought of what life could have been like for some people a long time ago in many places as well as in the place where the character met the woman, how even with many harsh difficulties there must also be and have been some other good relationships to the world that she could not easily know.
She thought about what the discoveries of the medicines such as the woman in the book knew would feel like to experience, what it would be like to know a relationship to nature in this way. She thought about a tree, the wood of which is used as incense and the first time she experienced the smell of it when burnt, about how the smell calmed her in pained moments.
She went to bed early that night and lay quietly in silence. She did this for two or three hours but didn’t notice the time pass. About a half-and-hour before she fell asleep she heard a neighbor walking down the street singing softly.
The next day, as she drove to work, she saw a little boy through the window of a car and thought about everything the boy might learn and where it could come from and why, about what it can be to discover, and she also thought about the dangers and opportunities the boy could experience in his life. As she parked her car, she felt herself become the woman from the story and the little boy both somehow at once but only for less than thirty or forty seconds. As she reached to open the door of her car, all of the thoughts she had been thinking that morning and the evening before dissipated, but she was left with a feeling of connection that was new to her, a relationship with everything she could encounter, an intensity of experience that before was secret.
What Was Theirs Is Now Sometimes In Some Ways Mine
There is a song I hear often, reminding me of a girl I knew for a few days in a hospital as a young teenager. I met her as I sat around the main table in the ward with the other kids to eat. A day or two after I met her, she was feeling better so went home.
The next day, she returned crying. Her boyfriend had shot himself in the stomach and died.
The song I now often hear, she had said the day after she returned and before I left, was their song. Sometimes, when I hear the song, I wonder what happened to her.
Many Bodies To Consider
In a grocery store, holding a frozen box of some meal of something that was supposed to be made by real immigrants or their children from wherever the country was that was supposed to have come up with that dish, the person chose a check-out lane based upon the general attractiveness of the checker and those already in line. As the person waited with the one item, not putting the icy box down so absorbing cold though wrapping fingers, the person looked around at everyone within eyesight in the store, then stared distantly down at the very near floor.
But it was when focusing on a magazine on the rack close to the register and then on a box of cereal that someone had decided at the last second not to buy, that the checker had left right next to the register—it was at this time that the person had the experience of bodily separation where there was the feeling of having two distinct bodies that could be in either the same or different physical spaces. At the moment of separation and the moment right after, the bodies were in mostly the same place, but quickly the person noticed that one of the bodies was weightless and hovering up next to the ceiling while the other body was heavier than what was within its own capacity to move and hadn’t moved, couldn’t move, anywhere.
Still focusing on the box of cereal, but now from two angles, the person realized that the decision to be in this lane at this time could play a part of one or more of the people behind in the same line being or not somewhere at the “right” or “wrong” moment where a car accident could happen or not, where a close friend could first be met or not, where someone could find themselves in a situation where many experiences and perspectives come together so what never made sense suddenly does or not, where an infinite variety of possible wonderful, horrible and just okay occurrences could happen because of the influence of one simple, insignificant choice.
After coordinating a kind of couple’s dance to pay for the groceries when the time came, moving the hovering body back down to play the part of puppeteer at the edges of the immovably heavy body, all the while with most of the eye’s focus still on the box of cereal, the person started to come back together as one body and began walking towards the door of the store. Walking out of the store, the person reflected on the realization that had just taken place about the enormous degree of impact the person had on others’ lives without even making any effort to do so; the person felt both completely powerful and completely vulnerable. Absorbing this further, the person was overcome with both energy and exhaustion, unsure of what to do.
Log Ick
There was a place. There was a person. The person lived in the place. It occurred from this time to this time. The person did this in the place—then this happened—then this happened. Also this—also that.
This this and this means this. This that and that means this. That that and that means that and that. Theoretically, this this that that and something else. Therefore, a disgusting log.
Doing It
Watching, as a man looks towards the light of the crosswalk and then over at the street empty of traffic, she sees his face express uncertainty, hesitation, fear, as if needing to ask permission to move even when the light is green and there are no vehicles near, so needing to be told that it is okay by an authority that isn’t present—so treading tremendous trepidation; the woman wondered if this is the same way that he would enter her if she allowed it, imagining the man naked, positioned between her spread legs, looking into and then away from her eyes.
Redicktionism
Everything the guy said was what was reduced to pointedly redefined meanings.
A Cliché Story With Or Without People
Time moves like a river, full of fish on a bed.
How Much Humiliation Does It Take To Become Humble?
There could be no amount of underground basement whipping, no amount of stories of embarrassing genitalia, no amount of imagined or real entire continents populated with ugly, gossiping ex-lovers, no amount of incidents with others which were so lacking in consideration that the resulting embarrassment simply for oneself sears, scarring, the whole of it replaying night after night and through each day; so no amount of daydreams of night-terrors where a fool could be no more a fool and where the people met and spoken to must have had an experience of disgust from the meeting that destroyed part of what makes the people able to smile—where one becomes a public picnic of attack feeding against others and self: there at least seemed that there could be no amount of any kind of such experience that would or could make any kind of change in behavior or perspective.
But what was the point of even asking this again? What even is humility? Is it part of some kind of humane humping? Is it, “millions of humans thinking of me,” as was said by the lonely person just before drowning in a masturbatory flood? Is it being the mascot of masochism where it is a fetish of fantasy? Is it a real thing that should inform a, or, the, way to live? Is it simply being exceptionally good at seeing or missing something?
A person did this; the same person did that. Another person did that; that same other person did this. That and this. This. That. Other people. Then. Humiliation? Becoming humble?
Lesson Plans
A college student meets with a professor in the professor’s office. The professor is on the phone when the student arrives, and the student waits—nervous—overhearing the words “funeral,” “family,” “arrangements,” “love,” and other words but does not consci
ously make sense of them or act differently towards the professor once they begin their conversation. The student had been troubled and is asking the professor how, after some absence from the class, it will be possible to finish. The student is completely convinced that the class has to be finished right away, convinced the class is of extreme importance and that the professor needs to help. The professor helps the student, but the student again is troubled and doesn’t finish the class.
A few years later, thinking about past struggles and accomplishments, the student consciously remembers the professor’s phone call: a brother had died; through this remembering, there was a different way of understanding oneself, the professor, the situation, and many interactions before and after.
Marriage
The old woman who is often seen in this city I am in, alone, walking, talking in shouts to her own mind with spit drools on cheek and chin—for a few seconds, as I walked past her, we spent lifetimes together. On the day that it happened, right after first seeing her—she, loud and spit faced—I saw her as a beautiful young lady, falling in love with her.
We were delicate yet fiercely
Secret Stories Page 14