One thing with two parts.

What if we cover our bodies with something sticky, like jam or pitch? What if we thereby form an everlasting bond? Or, I consume you like Mucklebones Jack; you live like the sheep and warm milk in Polyphemus’ belly, but in mine?

Thisworldlyness

Madimaken turned the dial on the antique television. Nothing but static and white noise that sounded as if it was a world removed. He spaced. His eyes set on nothing in particular in the grey waste of October outside his apt window on the 11th floor. A fire engine horn blasted below, every 20 seconds or so. It was an elementary school class—kids taking turns hopping into the driver’s seat and pulling the cord. Madimaken was thinking, no reason perhaps, of the time he convinced Brian Bartlet—all the kids called him “fart-let”—to open his locker, the combination for which he’d forgot, said he’d forgot anyway; it wasn’t his locker. Brian turned the dial. He could open any locker he boasted. The stinky kid, no friends, always lied about everything, even trivia, why? No matter—a mean girl some 30-40 pounds on Brian swept a leg under him, brought him low, and followed with a series of swift kicks. Brian, cursing, retreating, cursing at Madimaken too, flipped us all off. Defiant, to the last. Madimaken spent the whole summer trying to befriend Brian—he’d given up on us, me and his other friends—started to identify more with Brian.

October some 14 years later, nothing had really changed. The tall buildings were just as colorless. He remembered thinking they were hotels on first arriving here. He thought it was temporary too. He turned the tv off, the fire engine still sounding. He tried to go back to sleep—the night was better—the grey gave way to black and that was at least a fitting shade for it was night after all, whereas somehow the white orange yellow of the sun struck the city just so, so that everything was blanched and the red bricks basked in the glory of its pultaceous rays. The engine’s blasting went the way of the white noise—otherworldly—an there was nothing that stayed thisworldly for long—a dim awareness of a growing headache.

When he awoke it was nothing more than a dry mouth and a lingering drowsiness. The ever-grey of the afternoon persisted outside. He would have to rise now, put on his boots, maybe try the tv again.

Then, that bundle of effervescent percepts, his journal. Would the next one, bound by no design of his own, be about the current one: he was in fact right now writing about the next one, the red one. He feared to describe it even superficially: It was a warm day, nothing to do and the corresponding feeling of quick endless moments living at once above and below her affection. A kiss then. That was his preoccupation. He kissed the naked Jesus in a cruciform fashion, up, down, left, right, b, a, start—mindful of the tradition in spite of failing to feel, well, anything at all in the place he imagined his soulspot, not even a flick of the ankle upon hearing the pulse of the nearby church bell, and why did it make some dance and sing and others feel empty? He would get up now full of sleep and eye-droop and put his boots on, maybe try the tv again.