1. From it I read an excerpt from a Robert Gluck interview and a poem about cars. “I’ll read and let’s see what emerges.” Alice is always game. We played Asher’s 3-associations-away game and her own opposite game. We invent, negate, lie, and repurpose. “I’m not gonna correct myself anymore.” An onlooker hears and tells me the Paris Review office is near the New School in a nondescript office building that probably also hosts, like, military recruitment organizations. He worked for an agency that represented one of the artists that did a cover for the Review. What is the reward for saying such things? They walk away. I see people I’ve only seen in image-form.
2. Alice wants to dance; thank god I wore a hat. I'm always happy to dance. I take my place and let my feet head the curve this time. Without dancing I send my eyeballs to themselves and the night selects its door. It's a choice to be by the booth. It's not a choice to stay. It all starts with the soles of the feet, so it helps to really understand the architecture of your bones down there. Layer knees, hips, stomach, shoulders, neck, jaw, eyes, hands. Evidence of your sweat signals the death of genre; if you can believe this while living in the crowd's gaze, you can survive any length of time. My neck looks for nothing but the bottom of the next beat. I wonder if the music has siblings. My eyes slam back into my head as Meg blows her sweet-smelling vape smoke onto the CDJs and Jackson mimes DJing in response. In this room and in the world there are too many people.
3. I sat in Metrograph for a while practicing my spinal curve. I read a few things, always having to skip to the short stories’ last paragraph to see if it demands going back to start. Something about Shakespearean sonnets and coffee entering you like a dark phrase m’ont piqué, donc je ferme le livre and order a black coffee that the waiter forgets and so gives to me on the house. I tilt my head all the way back and up to the waiter’s attention to reveal my face from under the black rim of the military hat I bought at Episode in Le Marais. This hard-won truth slurps around in the back of my throat which is also my mind.
4. I’m living a frivolous, overextended life. To meet new ends I begin to elide my thoughts from myself and look falling directly in the eyes. Blah blah blah. I was in the shower the other day de-spooling snot from my nose like candy floss (I don't know what candy floss is).
5. I tell my students to push into the ground with their hands as they throw their bodies into the air and swing their feet toward bending surfaces. I hoist and chit chat all day with a forgettable man who has settled for $23 an hour. A swimmer with water-less eyes but on me they sweat. Everybody’s so hot in that room always. I give them the option to be in a group or solo. I watch community form around me and seep further into myself, smiling and feeling young.
6. I breathe toward the edges of my incessant burping, stealing words from mixed-up women scared to return bottles of wine. They ask if it’s natural and I curve further in.
7. Without dish soap the need to do dishes becomes secondary to the need to buy dish soap. Which subsides beneath the tides of impulse and drowsy domesticity. Staying in our rooms in New York City we think of ways to use condiments to communicate. I feel grateful in transit and wait for your sign.
8. I miss you, I love you, I can't wait for you to arrive. I edit constantly in my head but for you I try to edit less. I want to be honest with you for once. Because you have given me access to so much, taught me by pointing to and brushing past parts of myself I never knew were there. For your incidental generosity I will speak true and real words, will write good sentences, and will shower with kindness. I'll tell you where everything is. I'll show you where to go. I'll take you out, baby. I'll give you everything. I'll risk it all for you. You––who barely probably realize how much is in those books and our futile relationships with them. I notice and remember what you don't remark. I press and you are impressed. If I can write just one original line a day I'm happy. For you I will try to be so good. I want to survive with you. Climb onto the roof of a flooded house, through the halls and doors up to the attic and out the curved windows. No straight lines in sight.
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