INFINITE
CREST

The wind ripped around the edges of the surf blue Ford Escort as it beat forward through the tan expanse of W. Texas. In the heavy light of the desert two young men pursued the line determined before them at the greatest speed the car could achieve; & yet, within such vastness, without any objects interrupting the surface, it seemed barely to move in space—a constant velocity, like that of the earth. The tangible warmth of the desert late spring pushed around the small Hawaiian shirt of the dude behind the wheel, through the big wave of his dark hair, as he lowered the window to reveal a tumultuous pace, to whip absurdly around the cabin. He looked at the dynamic mess of his hair in the rear-view mirror, just above the accentuated form of tortoise-shell Wayfarer sunglasses.

The desert of far W. Texas stretches vastly, sits in a harsh blanket in all directions until the various barren holds of mountain seem to rise up and encompass you. You are thus in the high desert plains. The pure black substance of oil, once abundant in the strata, seems to still move within conception, through the veins of memory: a black blood, a substance of life. & yet so counterposed to this is the tan and dusty reality of the surface, where here and there one sees the specters of dried up and wind worn derricks. 

The sense of things became so specific: there was a life to the land, to its idea, to what it seemed to mean, in textures and things learned from books and movies. It was apart, unto itself, at the very edge of the world. To all things mammoth and so definitely of a Nature in disregard to our own there is an unsettling sense of time which crushes slowly and silently beyond us. The passenger, similar in form, but blond and in a white v-neck tshirt, looked out at an outcropping of rock, an untouched stretch of dirt rising and falling, and felt aware, in fleeting moments, of the world's existence independent of his own mind and matter. It seemed to say, "You are here, for the moment; but this'll go forth with the essential purpose of time without you." Then the dumb baseness of his reality sort of filtered back in; and pounding through his various conceptions was the Pacific Ocean way out ahead of them: the green-grey and white surf, the wash of waves, a basin of unfathomable shape and wake, breaking against California. 

"I'm thinking about moving to France; or maybe Germany: learn another language, you know?" The driver remained silent, looking forward. "It'd be cool to speak French," the passenger went on. "It's impressive to other people. There's those situations where you're, I don't know, like in a restaurant and some tourist is trying to order something in French. It'd be cool to just start speaking to him, like help him order. The people sitting around would think its fucking cool.—————I'd like to go to Africa, too. They speak French mostly.———I don't even want to go to France. I could learn it here, online, or buy a book with the CD. I'm not sure I'd have the discipline to really stick with it though." 

"You don't have a computer right now, right?"

"No—Well, I do, but it's at my sister's. It's a piece of shit. I need a new one. You can do that stuff online, right?"

"A language?"

"Yeah. Like an online teaching program?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

"Let's learn it together, man. It'd be easier, and we'd work better as, like, a pair."

"I don't think I want to learn French."

"Too much work?"

"No, I just don't really care to speak another language."

"Yeah, that's true."

"I'm not sure I can really speak English, man. I mean really speak it. You read, like, The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and those guys are speaking English on a whole 'nother level. I never use a word people don't know. I know like five words that people don't usually know, but I never remember to use them. I use like two of them that I've really remembered, and as soon as I say it I then say it in the normal way to make sure they get it. I write down all this shit when I read, I have a file on my laptop, just words, cool words. I get the definition, remember it for like a night, then never use them."

"Yeah, that's true."

"I really have no interest in speaking fucking French."

"Yeah."

"I don't even get why people would want to. I mean, who fucking cares? It's always to seem cooler to themselves, like you said. It can't be that useful."

"Yeah.—People make fun of Americans for not knowing another language."

"Well, English is like universal. The kids in whatever other country learn English, or they live, like, in some place where other languages are somewhat common so they learn that, and English, plus whatever their language is. I bet kids from England and Scotland, and Ireland, they probably don't all speak another language. It's not, like, just a dumb American thing."

"True. Fuck it. Lets really learn English. 

"It'd be better to do that than be a fucking moron in English and French."

"We should just learn better words, basically. Right?"

"Yeah. But actually use them, make 'em part of your normal vocabulary and what not."

There was a way in which he said "not", a subtle throatiness, top of the mouth, like "gnawt", which hinted at a type of California beachiness; a kind of cliche surf accent. The tight sleeves of the Hawaiian shirt were rolled high up on his arms, to the base of the shoulder, the fabric of the cuff white but showing faintly the print. They were both, the driver and passenger, tan, mid-twenties, healthy: the product of natural-ness and physicality, handsome and cool. The car had been stolen from the passenger's stepdad a few days earlier, along with a Buddy Holly greatest hits CD. "I don't know, man. I get into this shit and never actually do it." The driver was silent, and looked forward. 

"I'm not sure I understand the point of most, like, improvements," he said finally. "It's like, I have some shit I really like; that I'm good at."

"Like what?"

"Fuck you, man."

"No, I'm not, like, suggesting that you're gnawt good at anything. I'm just interested, like, what you think you're good at."

"I'm not even saying good at; strike the good at part. I mean things which I enjoy, you know. I have the life I want, basically."

"Yeah?"

"So, yeah, I mean I don't need to form myself into being this, kind of, you know: I don't need to be fucking, I don't know, I can't even think of anyone. Your sister's boyfriend. He goes to, where does he go?"

"Stanford."

"Yeah, and knows all this shit, probably speaks French, has read all these books—"

"You're the one talking about, fucking, what was it?"

"What?"

"That book where people speak really cool English."

"The Life of Samuel Johnson? Yeah, but that's like the only book I've read. I had to read shit in school, sort of, but that's the only book I've actually read. In fact, I haven't even read that. I just open it up to whatever page when I'm trying to fall asleep or I have to wait for some asshole to buy something in the gas station or something."

"I don't even know what you're saying, dude."

"I'm saying, that, you know, surfing is like enough for me. I may be a moron for that, but I just don't care about most the other shit."

"Yeah, I know what you're saying. But what about when we're, like, 38: then what?"

"Then what what?"

"You gonna be surfing when you're fucking old?"

"I'm not even thinking about that. I doubt I'll even make it that far."

"Pretty fucking corny, dude."

"What?"

"I'm not gonna make it that far. How the fuck are you gonna die? You don't do drugs, you drink, like casually. You're healthy."

"I don't know, asshole. Jesus. I'm just saying I don't care about when I'm older. I'll start reading books and shit then. I'll learn fucking Brazilian and, I don't know..."

"I get what you're saying, but at some point we need to make some fucking money."

"True."

"Do that when we're older too, maybe."

"Yeah."

The various whites of the hot afternoon were now shifting towards the more dramatic light of evening. They rode on for some time without speaking much. At some point they spotted a small herd of pronghorn antelope a few hundred yards from the road, shimmering in the heat distortion. The sun worked its way over the top of the car and was now out ahead, dropping down just to the side of the interstate. The desert air was turning towards a chill; the windows rolled up, the car relatively quiet but the faint sound of fast movement. The massive expanse of this hour of travel was suddenly interrupted by the voice of the driver, flat and almost absurd after such silence.

"Fuck."

"—What?" the passenger asked, startled out of a half sleeping state. 

"A cop."

"Dude, we're fucked," he said pushing himself up squarely into the seat. "You got your seat belt on?"

"My fucking seat belt? Least of our worries, man."

"Chill out—could just be routine shit."

The driver was pulling the car over into the dirt off the side of the road.

"—Were you speeding?"

"I don't know. Probably. The speedometer doesn't work, it was fucking floored," the driver said looking into the rearview. "Alright. Act cool."

"Born cool, man," the passenger said in a matter-of-fact, un-nervous way. The driver didn't seem to hear the comment as he rolled down the window. The lanky form of the officer in a cowboy hat was approaching in the side mirror, his front lit with the thick orange-red light of the desert sundown. 

"Good evening, officer." 

"Evening," the officer replied in a thick W. Texas accent, bending down into the window and looking at the two in the front seat. He leaned to his right, glancing in the back window over the rear seat which was empty. "Where you boys heading?"

"We, uh, we're driving out to Cali," said the driver, immediately wishing he had completed the word, but knowing it would sound stupid to tack it on after the fact.

"California," said the officer, giving the word all the hope it has historically held. "You live out in California?"

"Yeah, sort of. Parents live in Austin, just coming from there." 

The passenger felt suspicious having not spoken, so added simply the word "Yeah" to this statement. The officer bent a little lower and looked over at him through his big sunglasses. 

"Were we speeding, officer?" the driver asked.

"No. No, you was doing about two dozen under." 

"Shit," the driver said with a laugh. "I guess this thing doesn't go more than sixty."

"You rarely get an 80 mile-nower speed limit. I guess you boys won't get a chance to fulfill it."

They both laughed, feeling as though they had an understanding dude and that nothing was really wrong.

"So you're driving out across the southwest from Austin. I've done that trip myself. You going on through the night?"

"Yeah, think so." The passenger sort of echoed "think so" and looked through the windshield out ahead.

"You from Texas as well?" the officer asked the passenger.

"Yes, sir."

The officer held his glance a moment. "I know I look a little Mexican," said the passenger. "I'm just tan."  The driver glanced over at him and back through the windshield shaking his head. 

"Alright. Let me see those licenses and I'll get you on your way in a second." The cowboy form of the officer receded back to his cruiser, and when he was far enough away the driver smacked the passenger on the arm. "I look fucking Mexican? What was that about?" 

"Fuck. That hurt, dude. What?"

"You're something else, man."

"The shitty thing is I look even more Mexican in my license. It doesn't even look like me."

"I think the name Logan Reynolds will sort out that little mystery, you dumb fuck." 

"He seems cool though.—Cool cop."

"Yeah. Cool cop. He'll probably just let the stolen car slide being that he's fucking rad," the driver said sarcastically.

"It's not necessarily stolen, dude. I mean, it is your dad's. And we shouldn't even be talking about this shit out loud—they've all got fucking, you know, these like sonar devices to hear what people are saying."

"It's taking him a long time back there." The driver stared into the rearview, the passenger started to look at something on his forearm.

"Alright. He's coming back." 

The western silhouette of the officer got larger again in the mirror, the horizon beyond him now dark. "I can't believe this piece of shit only goes sixty," the driver said with the smallest bit of nervousness.

"Alright. Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Tompkins," he handed the two i.d.'s back to the driver. "You boys don't get into any trouble.—You got nothing in in the car you shouldn't have, do ya?"

"No, sir," the driver said while Logan simultaneously said "Yes, sir." 

"Alright. You boys be good. You don't mind I go out ahead, do you? I may push the cruiser past sixty a little." 

"No, sir," they said with a laugh. "Thanks officer."

"Alright." 

"Cool fucking cop," the driver said as the cruiser's headlights lit into the late evening and turned out into the interstate. "I bet my dad's too fucking lazy to call in that his car's stolen."

"He's probably taking the house apart looking for that Buddy Holly CD." 

They got the Escort back up to speed and for miles could see the taillights of the officer's cruiser getting further away until eventually disappearing. Logan fell asleep and after a time the driver cracked the window so that the cold night air of the desert would keep him alert. There was a monotony to the road which could have allowed for some thought, but with his mind engaged just enough on what it took to keep straight, the driver stared ahead with a tired sort of blankness. 

A BRIEF CLARITY, IN HOT WAVES

The desert is a terrible place to be sick for the environment has alloted only the barest elements of living, has kept nothing in reserve. Living in the desert means living with but almost against the land & atmosphere—living almost despite it. There are cultures, of course, which have developed within the desert; have evolved in tune to its light, its heat, its essential modes of being. From these have risen in succession Man's Semitic faiths, the desert seeming to be the great architect of religions. In the harsh face of such barren-ness one's gaze is constantly directed both inward & outward, where outward leads always upward to the sky & its abstractions. There is coupled with this the ever-present reminder of death. The desert is wrack with the ruins of these various manifestations of God & a terrible place to be sick, for being sick in the desert is to be suddenly at the close, lapping touch of a hell suggested in close relief to its counterpart—sculpted from the harsh tools of nothing in reserve.

It was in the desert where I was last sick, in February of 2009; that is, prior to the sickness which I am today only two days removed from. It would be difficult to place any mentionable illness before that, outside of childhood bouts with the flu; for my strongly resolute immune system has always kept me in a constant state of good health. This desert sickness took the form of a virulent sort of virus which was allowed to break down my physical integrity by help of persistent sun & work, by help of the desert's extremes of heat & cold, by the lack in our accommodations. I had a job I had to see through, so I pushed against it, my body. In any other circumstance I would have lied motionless while it ran its course. Instead I toiled hard with an architect friend on breaking apart a particularly obstinate strata of the Earth's surface with unfit tools. My mind didn't perceive it as charmingly at the time, for it wasn't capable of any wit; the mind, rather, was pre-occupied with its own ache & delirium, with the miserable toil of it's flesh under the strain of sickness; the drain of strengthless-ness; flesh humiliated under the appalling sword of the sun & a collapsed integrity.

I was sleeping those nights, or un-sleeping those nights, in a large campaign-style tent of white canvas, set on a wooden foundation, with a small filthy mattress of uneven-ness & tense springs. There with the incredible blue-white light of the moon which entered the large screen window just above me, I turned to abate the revulsion of my body by reading a copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom which I had in the canvas mason's bag I was using for luggage. In a rare moment of parallel veracity, or heightened coincidence, I opened randomly, having not the willfulness for choice or continuance, to Chapter XXXIII of Book III which begins, "About ten days I lay in that tent, suffering a bodily weakness which made my animal self crawl away and hide till the shame was passed." [You won't find any of this in David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia; you'll find instead an alarmingly beautiful/blonde simulacrum of Peter O'toole spinning around in white robes for three hours: wonderful film, actually.] I recognized there in the night a stark clarity to my fevered mind which patterned the author's, lying alike in the desert with sickness. Lawrence used the strange lucidity of fever to systematically break down the philosophy of war, both ideologically and tactically, from various sources of military genius carved in the classically clean stone of history, & applied each to his dirty little Arab Revolt. Each idea, turn, & movement grabbed in my mind: I understood with alarming crispness, & held them up in balance to test against each other, drawing lines between the group: I saw all connections, all faults, & was able to glance ahead of Lawrence's strategic conclusions, was able to obtain from the source material presented it's extrapolation into circumstances. I felt lucent and lucid of mind if not spirit. In the morning I'd push the white sheet from me, a fine layer of dust around my worn leather boots.

This past week has been spent under the delirious spell of an incredible fever, one which seemed to put me not through hell but through what Rimbaud referred to as a symphony of hells; each tossing itself at me in hot succession with a new plague of fear & suffering. The setting is one absolutely inverted to that of the last, outside of it's remove: being the house where I now make my home in a rocky but voluptuous corner of Connecticut. I live in relative seclusion, amongst a bucolic and elevated portion of the state, up a winding private drive, largely unto myself. Thus, in sickness I found myself thoroughly cut off, without even phone or internet connection. For the first time in my life I was forced to fight illness in a sort of vacuum, where I had to confront it starkly, uninterrupted: we lived together in a few rooms, where the multitude of leaves and light, or dark, beside the windows seemed to represent life apart: something absurdly not a part of this existence which sickness & I shared. The fever came seemingly in an instant, after a day spent swimming in the frigid waters of a lake nearby. When it came it quickly took me apart, & I was left trying to find the scared-off aspects of the self as understood in the day to day.

In the first afternoon I merely broke myself from my sense of duty, my desire to engage a day of subtly & light, & lied on the tan berber rug in the middle of the main room to sleep. There I underwent a strange mosaic of sleep & not sleep, where they seemed to blend in & out of each other; each composed of nearly the same material which took on the white of the walls, the tan of the rug, the hardwood of floors, the moving green & white & gold of the windows. The side of my conscious mind kept taking particular offense to the beauty of the day, to which my sickness seemed to act defiantly against. The process began repeating and sustaining, until eventually I awoke in a coldness inconsistent with the look of things; inconsistent with the light, now dying, which broke in skewed rectangles & lines through the wooden blinds onto the wooden floors, bending up the foot of the walls. There was beside me a southwestern wool blanket which I had bought while in far W. Texas. This I unfolded & put over my form, dropping my head back onto the hot surface of the pillow. As sleep regained & receded the patterns of the afternoon now became complicated with the purples and reds and blues of the blanket, which seemed to set over my mind in arabesque. The coldness seemed to be of a type untouched by the blanket, seemed to be composed inside of me rather than without, & thus unable to be covered. I slept. Opening my eyes for a moment in a few hours I found the house black; I cared not, but sensed in the moment that my sickness had increased: each symptom of the afternoon had heightened, & I felt, simply, worse. I needed water in a dire way, but couldn't inspire my body to rise; so I went back into sleep without food or water, allowing myself to be beaten by miserableness.

The following morning I woke with some semblance of vitality. I thought first of the day before, how it seemed to have been lost completely: a day removed from the order of my life, unlived. It took on a sort of absurd apartness which I hadn't the strength to define: I merely counted it lost. I pushed myself up at the elbows and trudged to the kitchen where I drank a tall glass of water & ate an apple. It wasn't long before I realized I had expended the trace amount of energy given me by the past twenty four hours of rest. It seemed to go out of me in an instant, & like a beaten animal I crawled back to my pitiful spot on the rug. The day began to repeat the one before, while I despaired, until early in the dreaded hours after noon when I started to find lines of thought around the edges of sleep. They began to rise from the darkness like the first lines of a symphony, rising & falling away, turning, but building towards composition. It wasn't as if I was willing thought against my uselessly lost day before, but thought began either willing itself or merely rising from a mind which was working itself in some fear against being lost into the heat & dark. As thoughts would come I would remark on them from the other half of my self, the self apart from their actions; but they'd then disappear from it's rationality, & I couldn't remember a detail of a thought which had just built to intricate complexity. I'd fall into a sleep of relative nothing-ness, & awake now covered in sweat. I remained in my place, where again the motif of thoughts would begin from the orchestra pit somewhere before me. I pushed the pillow from beneath me, its surface overtaken by heat, and my body now burning looked for cool. There I let the side of my face onto the harsh knit of the rug, where I remember with accuracy a line which my mind then composed in a sort of writerly third person: "My thoughts teetered back and forth but forward, as if the two legs of my mind were stepping over the broken apart ruins of my rational being." I said to myself after uttering this line in the interior, "These are the sort of lines I hoped to get out of this sickness," as if I were thinking with a writer's faculty, a documentarian's faculty, & not the consistent one of my base self. It was strange to be divided in half this way, especially as neither half seemed to be the objective one which I normally inhabited. In the sickness which I had undergone in that tent in the desert, I never lost the self: I merely managed to put the clarity of the fever towards the end of learning, of seeing. Here I was now balancing along the ocean edge of madness. I would awake with a thought & say to myself, "this is fucking madness," to which I would slip back off into it. It was either the mind under the maddening effect of high fever sustained, or the mind let free while I removed myself from enacted life as I knew it; as I allowed myself to float in this non-existence separate from each thing outside the windows.

In the evening I got back to the kitchen where I had again a glass of water & an apple. It occurred to me that I was sustaining thirty six hours of being on two apples & a body with no expendable flesh; but for the life of me I couldn't bring myself to ingest more, so I filled the glass of water, tearing up a few leaves of mint from the refrigerator into it, & took to my small bed upstairs. The rug seemed stained with two days of thought & sweat, & the thought of lying back on it revolted me. Before walking upstairs I grabbed my Apple laptop which was sitting on the dining table; saw beneath it a folded copy of the New York Times Style Section which, in setting down the glass of water, I picked up with my free hand. I glanced it over, coming to a large advertisement for Tiffany & Co. at the bottom in that specific bright blue. I briefly encountered the self, my former self, reactant to the aesthetics of the advertisement, but my weak arm let it to the table where I took back my glass of water & walked heavily towards further remove. The glass was sat beside the bed & I pulled the Hudson Bay Point Blanket given to me by my grandfather over my sickened flesh. Imagining my grandfather for a moment forced me to re-imagine that life existed elsewhere; my illness & this house having put me into a mindset of such overwhelmed & vile solipsism that I had forgotten I was beget of a father, & he a father, & both interacted with a world outside of these walls. The blanket was tossed to the floor; I sat the cold aluminum of the laptop on my thighs, propped the pillow up beneath my head, & opened the screen where it flicked immediately glowing to its background image of the Sahara from satellite. I opened a digital book file which I had on the desktop, a volume on William Flinders Petrie & Egyptian archaeology. This I engaged for forty minutes or so, staying right with the academics of the volume & snatching away briefly illuminative insights, until my fever reached a debilitating point & I was lost back into the disgusted vigil of the thing.

I mentioned before Rimbaud's symphony of hells from the "Night in Hell" section of his Saison en Enfer. In the poem, Rimbaud means that he should receive a hell for each of his sins: a hell for anger, a hell for pride, a hell for laziness, a hell for lust. It was on this second night that I seemed to be receiving a different hell than I had undergone before: this hell accompanied by a sort of plague of insects which were working at the edge of the bed. There was first a wasp which would vibrate against the window pane just above me, circling about the bed & landing around various folds of the blanket. This then turned to black ants which seemed to lap at the sheets in successive waves, a few getting up onto its surface where a heavy arm would push them off the edge. What in the world was occurring within me? I felt then an overwhelming desire to be done with this thing. Until that point my disgust was with the feeling of sickness, the lowliness of my body, but at that moment I became afraid of the immaterial side of the malady. I tossed where I lay & tried to shake off the concurrence of thoughts with simple movement. I was sweating through the heather grey of my t-shirt, my hair was wet. I tossed the blanket again from the bed. It was strange to me that my mind should be jogging between intellectual lucidity & unreal projections. Rising from the bed I went into the bathroom, turning on the recessed light above the porcelain sink. I was perturbed but almost attracted to my image in the mirror: my heavy eyes had taken on a new darkness & weight, I looked hollow: the thick wave of hair stood up four inches above my head, heavy with sweat and heat. I looked at my miserable-ness in the mirror; at myself for a moment as another which blurred into me. I threw a few handfuls of cold water onto my face, could feel the heat rising off of my skin. The bed was now so disturbed with the past few hours that I decided to return to the rug on the first floor.

It was the end of the overwhelming darkness of my illness. I changed out of my t-shirt, took another cold glass of water, & lying back onto the rug things felt somehow clean: pressed, renewed. Glancing back into the kitchen I admired the dramatics of its recessed lighting: the way it fell heavily on the wooden island, the wooden counters, the stainless steel of the stove. Such base things, such material & base things: but here given that sort of heavy divinity of a symphony lobby before a performance, as everyone walks around elegantly dressed & with shadows cast around their eyes. I lied there for an hour merely thinking over the hell of the previous hours, which had no lasting effect on my constitution. I regarded the delicate line between being right & being far from it: how it could simply be crossed. I remembered the way back for the few moments I had crossed: knew that I was being pushed there by something not genuinely of me. It wasn't long before I felt my body again awash in a wake of sickness, but my mind stayed clear. I shivered at the thought of a third day in this state & fell to sleep.

The next morning I awoke with the fresh ability to rise and enjoy a few moments. I felt well enough to shower, & afterwards I began to dress with the intention of leaving the house. Taking a white shirt from the door of the bathroom I began to button it while watching my own eyes in the mirror; waiting for sickness to touch me on the shoulder at any moment, to remind me that it was in the room: to say, in effect, "not so fast." I tucked the shirt into a pair of tan jeans, feeling as though dressing well would give me the outward semblance of health, might even help give me the inward sense of it—going so far as to spray cologne on my neck. There was a disappointing lack of dynamic to my regained form in the mirror: smoothed out now, cleaned: healthier, un-tortured. I missed, perhaps, my tragic image from the night before. I missed perhaps the suffering; missed the animal nature released by a flesh which failed the mind, to where the mind in itself could reach higher, somehow unburdened by a body which had become such a heavy presence as to break off & be carried on it's own surf. I missed that great wave in my dark hair, in various tones of chestnut color which were formed by unrest, sweat, miserable-ness. But I felt, I began to sense, a new vitality: as if I was sensing the essence of the self carved now with low relief in the stone face of a general, less aware being: where the natural light which fell from directly above was able to catch a portion the surfaces. I felt a new disregard for the body, for its gross failing, &, of course, it's inevitable decay; where the mind was capable still of a sort of gifted athleticism: irrational, perhaps: but gifted. For the body, with all it's petty needs & demands, all of it's egregious wants & desires, ultimately fails: it is, ultimately, a failure. & what of the mind? Does it too reach a point where it breaks down, losing the multitude of it's abilities, or does it become something else—still calculative & inspired, unencumbered by gross rationalities, desires, the ways of flesh? The answer to this is beyond me. In contrast to the few faiths which I do possess, I do know that it doesn't continue, the mind: that it of course ends as does the body within which it was barely held. But it is of no matter, for thought is a thing of no matter: was never defined by existing, by being, by a physical presence, by matter, & thus death to it is immaterial: it echoes in continuance. It is possible, or perhaps obvious, that the two are composed of the same essence, the body & mind. But something instinctual in me sensed over these few days a divide; & this divide I respect, acknowledge. I suddenly felt a revulsion for the landscape within which the house was set: a revulsion towards the Earth's repetitions & materials: its multitudes of life: pine needles gathering along the side of the house, deep runs of weeds, insects: soil, death, fallen trees rotting, species, wings, heat, thriving, competitions, things evolving. I determined in the moment to pursue with even greater deliberateness those things which had played constant in my adult life: the realms of thought; the unending shelves of literature, classical arts; appreciation of painting, philosophy. & I determined further to forbid the body it's consistently human want of inactivity: to work it tirelessly, in toil & action. It would be hell on Earth, I thought, to have body without mind: a reality which many, perhaps, are joyously accustomed to. I put my hand under the stream of cold water & ran it up through the front of my hair, retouching slightly the sense of my disappearing form. It was a version of the self, under the light of the night before, with dark eyes above shining porcelain, which had attained an otherness; but of what this otherness was composed of I failed to & still fail to properly define. I leave it simply as it was, unafraid momentarily of its return which will inevitably return; in much graver, greater form. It is the body ultimately which lives in fear of suffering. It occurred to me suddenly that I was in love; I was deep into an overwhelming crush, but had forgotten the tumult of it all which had been dominating my flesh & mind for months: she had been cut from me the way my body had been cut from me, by the merest flash. A hospital, I assume, is a sexless place.

—I put the iphone into the breast pocket of my shirt, felt the fabric weigh down upon the back of my neck. I took it out again & let it play a track from a new sort of surf record I associated with light-ness, joy. I made it no further than the couch, where I determined to rest for only a moment, but this moment became the afternoon, the afternoon became the evening. I wasn't yet fully RIGHT.

FRAGMENTS:

. There was a window of awakening a few hours later where I picked up the various elements of my being, my current position and behavior, my tendencies. I was able to look at the self with a incredible clarity which washed with the waves of heat that came upon me and receded.

[I became disgusted with my defeat. I decided not to escape the thing. I looked back at those ruins of rationality the mind had tip-toed over early that afternoon—my God! was it that afternoon? That thought had occurred in this same day? I had reproportioned the meaning of day, night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I had broken myself from the order of life, the walls of which began to move with me, around me. But no matter. I'd collect the fragments of the self, and each I'd hold up before me to regard. The fragments of my being would be pulled from this dirt, where I'd engage the lucidity of my mind given by this fever, or from wherever, whatever it came. There would be an examination of the self: I was in such poor contact with being that my pride could undergo this purging. ]

But sickness is a great equalizer; in it's capability second only to death, which it flirts with and turns to often.

, and having been sick within one comes to understand why forty thousand profits have hurled their mind in His direction.

The amount of time that is compressed into this narrative, remember, is long and full: it's the length of one's own days, the day and night within which you are engaged now, repeated times three. Literature has a way of, like memory, making time seem something much more easily traversed. Thus, I was living in time of length, and realizing I couldn't stand to spend another day in this fashion was felt from a state of sickness spent over hours upon hours.

JOHN STEPHENS, SALISBURY, CT, MMX. OU PHRONTIS or WYWORRI.

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