Remember this the next time you flinch. 106 (1984) It happened toward the end of October that year. Dylan never returned to the farm. Even its direction out of Dad’s driveway hummed with a patina of shame–enough to wince his gaze to the left. Sure, he savoured the memories of Harley–sex was the one thing […]
“How big was her bush?” 97 (Childhood) Sometimes, as a child, I would sleep with my eyes open–terrify my mother. Sometimes I dreamed this crazy dream where the world was nothing more than a rind, a skin stretched too tight over bloated oblivion, like all the souls in the world were chewing gum and God […]
No matter how radical you pretend to be. 78 (Inapplicable) One of the most astounding things about the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness is its plasticity. Why do I no longer recognize Dylan? Because so much that was implicit for him has become explicit to me. I can Now represent those things he could only […]
I think that was when the truth first grinned at me, warm and toothless. 59 (1984) Scarface had already been out in VHS for some time, but because so many of them watched movies together in the bunkhouse, it seemed that the farm discovered it all at once. In a sense, it was a watershed […]
Everyone sleeps through their own funeral. 50 (1984) In retrospect, it surprises me that Cutter waited as long as he did. The other guys had been pressing Dylan about the leaf count for days, questions he deflected by playing stupid. He could tell that Cutter wasn’t buying his answers, but for whatever reason he never […]
Meaning is simply the shape of our abjection. 41 (1984) Things you see in the harvest bunkhouse: Cutter. Always keeping tabs, cigarette lolling from the corner of his carnivorous Chiclet grin. Always reserving some hidden right that no one had acknowledged, but that everyone–including Long Tom–had conceded. If anyone said anything goofy, his was the […]
Imagine being hated. 31 (1984) Dylan despised the phone–almost as much as Dad did. When I was twelve I would drive our riding lawn-mower a mile or so down Lakeshore Road to the Parson’s, the engine so loud that I wouldn’t hear the whisk of passing cars until they passed me. I mowed their lawn […]
When you hang in the high gloom, everything is illuminated from below. 18 (1996) Truth is just theory with a handgun. Sometimes it’s the universe that shoots you. Sometimes it’s the theorist (or more embarrassing yet, a fucking disciple). I had learned my lesson. By this time I was keeping two books, one to show […]
Book Two: Harvest 1 (1984) There’s always this lull before tobacco harvest begins. It’s like you can hear it idling in the future, the clatter of machinery, the carnival of characters. The summer skies hang hot and indolent. The flies scribble through windless air. And it seems impossible that you can be lazy, that you […]
You only scrub viruses from your skin. X (Childhood) Dishevelled. That is how I feel. That is how I am. “So… Who next?” Disorganized. “What about this one?” I can barely remember what it’s like, living in an environment that enabled. Being in love. “Simmons? I don’t know… What’s she doing again?” Disapproval is a […]
Three Pound Brain 