Speaking of people who write poems, Heather had tried her hand at one once

Breathe
A person in need of..
A person in lieu of..
..Some new way to navigate the night
Something to carry me over into day

Somewhere very specifically,
In fact halfway between Greenland and Taxco
at an insurance office that clearly used to be a KFC
And halfway between a lot of other places that matter, too

Continuous is not the opposite of transient, not only

To write a poem you need only say one thing
and then let it explain itself, that is
go back and unpack any part of it, every if you want it to go on forever
but you must be discreet about it,
not because I insist but because you already are

Seems you can write about anything now, huh? and it will
Hold
Someone's attention--but first, a second is a tick of a clock for everyone but for me, as many moments as I am aware of, which for the Aware makes the night and a second so

Damn long. As many points in a second as there are on a line, or on a dot
So a sleepless night really is infinitely long

--anything, it seems, in fact, even a bench outside an insurance office, open 24 hours (the bench, not the office)
Get out of bed, get cold so that you have something to want to get back to
For now, you have 19, and 72, and a million, and
uncountable seconds to sit through, thinking

A triangle of light, greenish like mold
makes grassy shadows

The bench is wooden and wet. Sit.

So this is what it looks like from inside. (This is the light that wakes me up when it turns on at Midnight, if I'm asleep and if I haven't turned the blinds just right.) It's a much different light now that I don't fight it but come inside it, moth-like

Yes, to survive is such a basic instict; when it is taken care of there is not much else that is as important, so that one is left lost, to navigate
without direction, on a map of infinitesimal (sic) detail. And if each is as important as the next, then one might as well be on a bench as in bed

Did you know the light went off at 5? Maybe they are trying to save green electricity

Breathe.

Thaddeus was reading his poetry. It was really quite preposterous.

“O, down the river of woe and pearls
I close my wandering eye--
This from a man with a purpose,
A porpoise full of me.
Whilst pivoting and thrashing
I can’t say why for that which I am here
To present--present--presently
A polished horizon in my hand!”

This went on for awhile. Thoroughly were many listeners confused. Walter concentrated. He listened like a man poring over a love letter, looking for clues. Jessi watched him and listened, ravenously curious to know what was going on in his mind.
Harlow listened gravely. She let the lilting torrent of his oratory wash through her ears like bathwater. She had long ago found her niche in the enjoyment of her friends’ art, that by relishing an entirely different effect than the one intended, she was not responsible for the content; as a bonus, it seemed, she was often heralded for her creative interpretations. Thad never questioned her comprehension of his wordplay, and even held her up as a model of one who understood him. And maybe she did understand him best because she did not try to; she simply let him be his odd self, found what she did understand about him and praised him for that, genuinely and without judgment, and she truly found pleasure in his work.
As he concluded his performance and stepped off with feather-like grace, Harlow applauded politely and turned to the table.

“That might be one of my favorites,” she offered as a starting point. “I was so taken by how much I felt my attention--oh, I don’t know, wander away, and I started to think about other things, but those p sounds came at such sharp…random times, they were like traffic cones, or rocks in rapids. They kept my mind on course.”
“Taken,” mused Walter, “that’s a good word.”
“What did you think?” Jessi asked him.
He waited patiently for himself to begin speaking. “I felt as though I were in another dimension,” he said finally, surprising everyone with his first emotionally invested remark yet. “One where words became their meaning. It makes me sad to revert to regular language.”
Jessi paused, trying to jump to a different plane of interpretation without faltering.

“That’s really interesting,” agreed Harlow, but not too readily. “I think I agree.”
They quieted as the next performer took the stage and Thad began his long return across the room, stopping frequently by fellow pedants and poets.
“But can a whole poem be…kept on track by p sounds?” Jessi blurted out to the table, sounding petulant. She had been trying for a more eloquent challenge. More gently: “I had trouble taking it in--I mean, the water imagery was so fragmented, and if the p sounds were the rocks, then…”
“Mmm,” responded Walter, now engaged; he seemed to have found himself at last. “That’s interesting. I wonder the same thing. But maybe the answer must be yes, because in fact, the whole poem was kept on course by p sounds, and that is why the words themselves became like water, and to assign them their conventional meaning might be a mistake. Also…‘taking it in’…yes, with respect, I think the intention is to change the way you listen, almost as if there were a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to listen--you see, instead of you taking the poem in, which you have demonstrated is very difficult, if not impossible, I think he wants the poem to take you. Which it can only do if you let go of your preconceptions of language.”
“But couldn’t any…”
“Yes,” said Harlow excitedly--
--Jessi’s mind was moving sluggishly, maddeningly sluggishly, too maddening to answer cleverly; if only she could argue that point expertly, or expand on it even marginally insightfully, but the red and black of the stage and curtain swam in her vision and the room seemed too black and complex and too heavy to wade through--
(A woman was on stage using an Etch-a-Sketch to write words she would not say aloud)
Walter seemed concerned, and moved his hands for the first time tonight, he moved them onto Jessi’s, shocking her back to attention, “Do you see what I mean? That is why I thought it was so good. Of course, that is subjective.”
Recognizing a merciful second chance: “That makes sense. No, I think you’re right. I mean--”
Again her voice failed her and her mind seemed uninterested in providing her with quick, droll remarks designed to allure. Left to her own devices she resorted to her usual reticence; yes, now she had Walter fumbling for words:
He sighed: then, “But it was strange. I was listening but I kept thinking about that painting of a woman, the one above the door, who seems to be dissolving into her surroundings--”
My painting? With horror she realized he had read it backwards--no, she had painted it backward--no, there were two ways to look at it and she had failed to notice one--how many more were there, for any of her paintings, that she had never seen?--
“What about it?” she asked calmly, twisting her hand so that their touching was more deliberate; whether he meant to hold her hands or not, there it was
Distracting, or calling attention?
Walter slowed, his fingers responded favorably to her movement and he looked down and to the side in deep thought; “I can’t say…”
Knowing full well it was the alcohol muddling her mind she abruptly rose and made her way to the bar. Behind her, Harlow moved closer and said something subtle to Walter; Thad was not back yet; Jessi would see him first.
She ordered another drink and a second time opened herself up to the room, leaning back on the bar, to establish herself as alone/independent, priding herself in her juxtaposition with the women who huddled in toward each other and tried to hide when unaccompanied. She felt a continuing shock, the after effect of Walter’s sudden physical assertion; excited but ashamed of her mental lapse, she could return the energy physically but now she must prove herself mentally before she could feel attracted to him, and oh, how she wanted to feel attracted to him--
Returning to the table she ignored Harlow’s passive attempt to stay next to Walter and edged her way back in to her original seat. “Are you going up tonight, my dear?” has asked her, indicating the stage.
“Oh no, I’m not a poet,” she replied, and unexpectedly, “I only perform for myself.”
Showing his intrigue (thus giving her the upper hand), “Mm?”

The Improbable Errol Spice

The question is, why did Jessi evade Walter’s question? And why is she never at work?

Jessi had been adopted several years ago by a rich old hatter named Errol Spice. He was a thousand years old and bedridden, but he proclaimed not to mind because the only place he wanted to be was in his dreams anyway. At first he had only commissioned her to do one painting for him, but he fell madly in love with it, so he began to commission her to do others, and then other things, until finally she had no need or time to look for another job. His pay was sporadic but robust enough to keep her interested in the beginning, and by now, she had grown used to random bursts of money interrupting long periods of poverty, and was totally indifferent to money.

His dreams, which he described to her while she took careful notes, sometimes on paper, reflected a life of flamboyant and erratic travel, so it was a surprise when she discovered he had never left the city. That did account for the vast geographical and cultural discrepancies, which she had originally attributed to the fact that they were dreams--but when she learned everything he told her came from his own mind, she took his requests, and consequently her painting, much more seriously.
She had recently begun a line of mock advertisements for him, each one carefully modeled after a dream of particular importance. So far she had completely a poster announcing a Spoken Word performance in Reykjavik, a fictional band called the Cataclysmic Foxtrot appearance in Manila, and ballroom dancing lessons in Toledo, each in their respective city’s native language. The projects required moderate research, mostly translating the wording into the proper dialect; little time was spent on learning the region’s artistic style or cultural norms, so they preserved something of Errol’s dreaminess and seemed to make the far-reaching cities of the world more similar to home. Errol Spice loved them.

He had recently developed an all-consuming preoccupation with a dream in which he had sailed to Greece:
“…which by the time I got there turned out to be only the street I grew up on…my mother alive and waiting for me to finish something for her. She wouldn’t let me come inside because she wasn’t finished cleaning yet and everything was very definitely purple for a time. And so I went to find a, a phone to call my father who was upstairs but the phones only worked in Greek so I couldn’t use them, and somehow I knew that I needed to find him, and so I went to the other houses on the street, but there were big yellow columns in the way, sort of like trees, only they were called Absolutes, and I couldn’t see around them, and so I had to climb over them. And then I was in the city of Athens with a very beautiful woman who told me she had a phone but on our way to get it we ended up in a fountain, very naked and wet…” And he proceeded to illustrate a very graphic sex scene with a woman who had promised him a phone, and the detail was overwhelming.

“What do you mean when you say everything was purple,” asked Jessi.
“Well--only in the beginning. And not visually. ‘Purple’ seemed to be very present, as if the time itself were purple, I don’t mean my house was purple or anything.”
“Okay. And the trees were called Absolutes?”
“Yes. They weren’t trees. I don’t know how I know that. But I think it’s very relevant that I could not see around them, but they were excessively tall. Excessively tall.”
“And the woman?”
“Not as tall.”
“Uh huh. What about her, though?”
“Ah, Greek, I suppose. And she had a phone somewhere, and things weren’t as purple then, instead they were…full.”
“Full?”
“Yes, things were full. Each moment seemed very…heavy. And I distinctly remember moments passing the way they do awake, but usually dream moments all happen at once. But that’s not important.”
“Of course it is. Can you tell me any more about the woman?”
“Yes, she was very…meaningful.”
“How so?”
“Ahh--yes.”
In answer to the question, Jessi herself thought she had hit jackpot in terms of landing a well-paying, interesting, flexible, and incredibly cool job. She truly liked Errol and thought she understood his vibrant and pathetic desire to give form to his dreams, or to see the world (she wasn’t sure which); she pitied him, a little, and sometimes envied him, and was glad she could help him. So why wouldn’t she tell anyone?

What if you could only say exactly what you mean?
Would you still want to be selfless, or would sometimes you be
able to fill the longing, and to care
And all you did was sit around and breathe the
sounds like eyes closed make a symphony.
Would there still be infinity to work for?
And what if things were perfect, and your characters were friends
And your thoughts are hardly startled,and you think you've reached the
part where calmness takes its toll
Can you reach into your
innermost depths, retrieve something that's the essence of you,
something terribly familiar, but altogether

Do people actually put banana slices in their cereal, or is that just in commercials? If so, how does everyone know that?
Joel had always thought that the cross section of a banana looked somewhat like a face, as if by cutting it in half one could see the true feelings of the banana. On his cereal today he neatly arranged ten screaming faces.