the things that trap us all—some are massive and heavy and full of corners, but somehow cactus sap and celebrities seem titanic even though they fit into pots and planes. the third man, his trap is in a plane, and i don’t know if he wants to be them or their planes or anything but one person, but it is a lucky thing that planes have lights on their wings.
traps are subjective. i mean, i know we all know that everything is subjective. but dennis thinks that the monastery is subjective and the third man thinks the plane is subjective and i just want us all to know that subjective things are still titanic.
dennis knows that. because he said, “schoolgirl obsession with the cheap doings of tv starlets breaks everybody’s hearts.” yes, dennis. he knows stuff. like when he said that each person is one chance or set of days. i think maybe that if anyone else had called me that, i might have argued, but i know that dennis doesn’t mean “one set of days” in a small way, but in a big and true way. he isn’t demeaning, he is only saying that even sets of thousands days look small when i can hold them in the palm of my hand, or drop and break them.
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after rain:
a man destroyed by his garden and the wagons of the dead (because we all think the dead are mute, but the truth is that the dead are a riotous, boisterous, clamorous crowd that crush the sky and our fathers into mutes).
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bring in the gods:
i did not write this, only made it into small and more broken lines.
but it is beautiful.
“we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living...”
“what do you want?”
“to keep what i already have.”
“you ask too much.”
“then you are at peace.”
“i am not at peace. i want to fail. i am hungry for what i am becoming.”
i thought this: i want to keep what i have and steal what i am to become. i want them both and i want to be myself in layers, keeping what i have under on a secret inside skin, and putting what i become over the top like a new coat of paint over some rust and jewels, until i am layered like a tree, by years and years and hunger.
