Saturday, July 12, 2008

An open letter to the Universe last night / An open letter to the two girls in the park last night

Dear Universe last night,

Although I have no absolutely certain regrets about my constant attempts to rearrange any number of your aspects, I do nevertheless feel that I should offer some sort of apology -- in order, perhaps, just to keep things moving smoothly between us and to keep up appearances in front of the watchful eyes of the vigilant and the casual observers alike. In other words, I feel that I should offer an apology as a sort of political move.



There is a black, tar-like substance all over my hands, this morning, like the grease of the wheels of time. I made decisions, and it does not matter good nor bad. I attempted to make alterations to the flow of things and in so attempting, I did, in fact, make alterations. The comedic aspects; the overwhelming sense of love for my fellow human beings of fine and clumsy form; the pleasant exchange with the police in the park; the slap on the wrist; the questioning glances that I did not see; the deft moves, the charitable moves, the expedient moves; running into an acquaintance of times past with the grease of the wheels of time, reeking, all over my hands and my fly down -- these things were all just manifest aspects of the decisions that I made in order to alter your course, to rearrange and somehow order you in a way that I saw fit. People must do these things. I am a gallerist of improvised thrills. I am an improviser of wagers and assigned meanings. I saw lightning to the north as I fell asleep with the women shouting and running in their billowy summer dresses on the wide sidewalks below my window. I certainly did not (nor do I ever) intend to insult you by insinuating that the state that you had been in up until the moment that I began my attempts to alter it was somehow inadequate or inferior to some hypothetical mutation of said state. Who do I think I am to keep pushing, pushing, pushing and jamming my hands into the gears of time and activity, forcing auspices, and sloshing around the materials of occurence like finger paints? I am so sorry that I tried to talk to you when I could not speak.

--

Dear girls in the park last night,

It is really no significant problem that while we were sitting together, you seemed only to erratically notice my existence. I really do not care that much. I barely even remember your faces. Or rather, I should say, I only actually remember one of your faces. But you could have thanked me for deftly cleaning the gears of time for you with an improvised tool made of a notebook spine, and for trying to convince you to sit in the grass, rather than on the basketball court. If it were not for me, you two would have only thought about your activities the way that you were bound to think of them and you would have had no idea what I was thinking if I had not sat there, speaking in the wild manner in which I was speaking. I should not have to ask "Is it alright with you if I sit here?" The real problem is that you actually offered me nothing and you ran like the wind when the police came. The real problem is that you aroused some sort of strange, whimsical anger in me and that I now feel the need to write you an open letter. Why did the two of you have to accost me like that when the DJ was playing West African guitar band music and orbit me like troublesome cosmic objects, massively looming, and rotating, pushing and pulling me to that park where you would then attempt to challenge my very existence by looking only at each other or the sky or your devices. I am trying not to do anything, trying to avoid action altogether; why did you have to go and challenge my existence and act like planets and grease time and make me run into an acquaintance of times past? Now I have had to spend the morning speaking like this and trying to recall all of the details of the lightning that I saw in the north as I fell asleep, wondering how badly I startled my roommate when I woke him on the couch and if it is of any consequence whether or not I intended to be your theodicean or your jester or your shill. You should have stabbed me and stolen my money and we should have set ourselves on fire together. Your equanimity was not the type that actually works. Go home. Stay there.

So many crossing places all there, together

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