We move and stop. We regard our surroundings: an olive branch, a piece of chalk, a bone, a watch, and a pot. We shit in the pot, examine the watch by bringing it to our ears, toss it aside, and stare at the chalk. How odd, how odd for such a thing still. We gnaw the bone, wipe our asses with the olive branch. We look at the watch again. We leave.
We breathe and nothing comes of it, or came, so we go. Arriving and leaving with each step, every step; coming briefly, to go to another rest. We stop for short intervals the same way our feet do, but also piss and swallow, which they do not do. We cannot do all three, or even two of the three, at once. Impossible, or too trivial to do so, or stop. A perpetual state of always and never. We are in between, like breaths, in the middle of something that moves, in and out, never being what we were when we first came upon anything or after we left it.
We are tired but it all seems reassuring, or redundant. What ‘it’ is, we do not know, but it is more than just an expression. “it” is something, a number perhaps or a set of numbers or lengths or feet, but not our feet, for our feet are all the same and move. Numbers do not move, they simply note our movement: figures and planes are our permanent abstractions; without them we would have nothing to judge or have with, not even our movement. Yes, comforting to note how far we have travelled without comfort. We are not dragging ourselves in place at least; arching our legs and angling our ankles for nothing. Figures and planes and some measure of distance: receding, enlarging, level, shifting of perspectives. We are forever leaving somewhere and arriving anywhere but never here for too long.
It starts to rain, raining. We stop. There are objects around us, but we shut our eyes. It does not take much. It is raining and the drops beat on our backs. We do not move for the time it takes for the storm to pass: we are in our minds and somewhere other than here, as always, but in our minds and somewhere else, more than here can offer. At one time it might have been imagination, but that no longer has any meaning. It has stopped raining. The air wraps around and slithers when wet. When it rains and we do not seek shelter. Rain is shelter; it is of our shape on us, our thirst, it cleanses. Rain is water left. We move to only have it rain on us.
When we walk, we walk almost touching our toes: our shoulders are level and slightly forward of the ribs, with the bones of our spine jutting like stubby fins from the centerline of our curved backs. Very reptilian. But we have stopped and we straighten our backs to be as boards: very erect, smooth and flat. It is not easy. It is not raining. It pleases us oddly, and we do not know why ‘oddly’, to hear our joints popping; miniature air explosions from beneath and within the bone. This way we know we still have backs unbroken; little else is.
We regard our surroundings: a few feathers, a leather bound book, a number of nail, or toenail, it is not certain, clippings, and a painting. This is of interest: we look at the painting to judge its appropriateness. In various, and undoubtedly, specific areas of the canvas surface, there is color, but all appears grey and meaningless. We are colorblind and can only comprehend shades and shapes. For instance: the book. It has a cover made of dead skin, its interior consists of thinly sliced torsos, and for the purpose of exposition of things not immediately apparent upon the surface, but that is lodged in our minds, melted hair binds the whole thing to itself. Other than that, nothing. Again we approach the painting. For lack of sight we run our fingers over the surface to discern other than what we, or the artist for that matter, intended to see, or saw. We chew on finger or toenails, as we do this, and run the scraps of feathers through our scalps. Recreation, or critique, if we had degrees, but even the temperature escapes us. So we stare, to recap, at a painting, one hand running back and forth on it, our jaws working like cows, hard to swallow without spit-we abandoned that, much too much baggage-with bits of feathers in the wire of our scalps, silent except for the wet sounds of what sinews and muscles remain.
For everything is barren; not dead, barren. Even the painting: all the strokes are of something not mixed well, gritty, a quick attempt, and merely, at that. We drop our fingertips and they rest at our thighs, breathing deep for a scant few seconds. Then we arch ourselves, almost doubled over, but not in pain, and move on. Nothing has been of use to us here.
We move and while we move, on average a very rare event overall, we rut, to keep us, as us, for we are alone enough, however also the numbers dwindle, and we cannot continue if we do not fuck at some points. This is done with much precision; the act dry and without lust, complete by the time of contact. Make no assumption: it is not enjoyable, but it must be done. Necessary. We fuck as we shit: a consumption of time to be done and over with, for sustenance, or survival. Sometimes it is successful, we become bloated and drip and break water. That is of interest: water breaking, heralding arrival, after much constipation.
We arrive, have arrived, and grow, have grown and grow old, die, and leave. This is how it was and is. We do not will, we observe, everything is foreign and yet, all-too-familiar, our senses dulled by the extremities, including our limbs. Silent but for our grunts and what little is left around us. Peculiar only to believe otherwise: that we are neither product nor waste, that we leave footprints along with prodigies and scraps uneaten, that everything had been other than where we are now, in the present state. Impossible. We can no longer express, nothing to do with the chords, but with the orchestra in general, without even marked sheets, the specifics are too dull for words. In essence, at the heart of it, the only constant, after all, only this, and the end, remaining: we move and stop ..we regard our surroundings ..there is nothing of use to us here.