[dropcap]“[/dropcap][dropcap]M[/dropcap]emorize scripture fast as you can, fast as you can type memorize it quickly and then write it down so that others can read it later, yourself included. It is important that you do this so dont forget that I am the one telling you now. “
Lame old beggars washed up on the sidewalks just picking at their toenails in the same way they look for edible trash in the trash bin, they are old and tired now but still they keep trucking, trucking alone looking for their scraps and dressing themselves in them. Why not suicide by means extraordinary or any means whatever just be sure to make it public, really public, ruin some childhoods, why not.
The watch sits on the book by the window, and outside the window rain falls and the steam from coffee coats the corner of the inside of the window. The rain falls on cobblestones patterned with gutters centrally placed to allow the rain not to puddle but to fall into drains where it is carried far far away and can’t bother anyone. Ivy greens are growing on the walls, regrettably some torn down and the sun shines through the ones that remain, which is nice but the walls sometimes ruin the scenery. It doesn’t smell much of anything except in the hallway leading to the door to the street, which always reeks of smoke. The watch still sits on the book, though, ticking away as usual, as it usually does, doing what watches usually do, which is tick. nothing new about that at all, and we really shouldn’t be surprised when we consider it, or when we consider the person sitting at the table drinking the coffee with an empty head and looking out the window. He collects his own rubbish.
Lame drawings adorned walls of green picture ivy that willowed down its side into puddles on the floor where it had built up and rotted. The floor became the proving ground of new species looking to eat their way into the world and out of the room, but till then they just continued to hatch and fest and crawl in the ivy. One would not want to walk in there without shoes as the bugs would crawl and eat the meat of one’s toes, under the toe’s nail they would squirm and eat. Beware that floor.
And so the shoed man collecting some empties looking out the window at the rain drinking his coffee, and outside the bums on the sidewalk, oozing colour into the puddles like chalk left out in the elements, oozing and losing its consistency as it oozes. Sometimes they would get up and sift, sift a bit more in the hopes of finding something, but sure enough there would be noth-
ing. They had already sifted those cans that day and there would be none left for tomorrow either but what else to do when one has no shoes and is stuck on the pavement. Do you know what it’s like to have to hide every time you want to take a shit? And then one needs to consider before hand, before the urge to shit approaches, what one is going to wipe away the shit with. Then one must get used to the worst of messes, and shit on one’s hand. Eating garbage does not lend itself to clean, smooth shits, but the runniest, wateriest shits that splash and make a big mess needing of unsure wiping with any disgusting scrap of cloth to be found. All while hiding. Then, ruined for the day, one retreats back to the sidewalk. It’s hard to look for food when one only wants to cry all the time.
“Again, memorize the scriptures and jot them down as I told you, you forgot some way along. It was a nice story but that’s it don’t fool yourself into thinking that I approve that somehow you gutted out something of any value. Don’t begin with me again this sad round of ecstatic outpour you know where it leads, the most miserable path to everything is trodden by nothings nothings that haven’t found anything that’s why they’re on the path to everything so have some fun with it at least on the way. Don’t take it so damn seriously because it’s really going nowhere at all for a long time still, until it finally goes somewhere and then you can stop typing.”
Beneath the gender apocalypse that was his home there squirmed some sort of rat, that like the bugs liked to eat, but it ate at the wires instead. The wires were old and worn as they were many, and really none of them led to anywhere at all. Who they were woven by I can’t be sure, but they were woven thick, and though they have all rusted and so lead to nowhere, were clearly laid with some great purpose or design, very purposely they were laid in the great thick bundles of all wonderful colours. Imagine into thinking that I’m here to stay because that isn’t the case. I’m just a purveyor of treaties, of land deeds and titles. blues and greens, pinks and purples all designating voltage or something. All carrying something, maybe electricity or the light beam signals from computers, the internet creeping its way along the inner rubber lining of the golden coloured pinks and blues of the wires. But while the rats eat away at the rusting metal and gnaw their teeth down to the gums at it, the rubber persists in its colourfulness, nothing drains that rubber of colour not even the rain water that sloughs off the bums on the sidewalk, pooling down into gutters and rushing beneath the streets to settle and sink down through the dirt, smoothing off rocks even down there below as its travels slowly down and collects again into underwater rivers that smash at the great tides of wires all around. They remain pink and green and blue and orange as the big rats crawl all over them and eat at the rusted metal.
Later:
Show me the dark elbows of your room, what collects in them? show them to me, allow me to draw my head close and lick at them so we can find out exactly what is there. I can’t tell just by looking, the corner of the corner is far too deep and dark for that, so let me introduce some moisture into the equation and balance out the variables. But that doesn’t mean that I have to belong to this place, just because I tasted the corner. Don’t trick yourself I come around every once in a while and evaluate the situation don’t you see? I’m really just a bureaucrat thats all – don’t get attached at the hip and don’t expect to see me before long. It will be a great while before I venture round again but be sure that you will have totally forgotten me by that time. That is definite and even written into the equation, there is nothing we haven’t thought of.
The man who had until then been drinking coffee at the window let the evaluator out the door and hurriedly mopped up the corner with old dishwater – it was all he had. Now the coffee had gone cold and the steam condensed into drops that dripped down the side of the window, over the shallow and short sill, and onto the desk, making a little puddle of their own, but no convenient drain, and so they just soaked into the wood, and to this very day if one runs a hand over the wood there is detectable a slight warp in the wood. It is raised ever so slightly, and has a hue just a bit darker than the rest of the wood – but its nothing that sand paper and good varnish can’t fix. If one could find any of it. It wouldn’t really be worth it any more though, as the bugs finally ate holes right through the floor and the walls and it’s been notified that there exists a risk of sinkholes throughout the entire city. The wires had in fact been laid so thick, that now since they have been nearly entirely digested by the hungry rats, there exists the very real threat of sinkholes, and therefore only walking is permitted and grocery trucks only manage to get to the peripheries of the city. Who cares about a desk?
