Rolly Poly Math

and shared a pair of pants together.

One was too hairy, and

the other was too long, but

somehow

Sandra (canvasser, on airplane): Excuse me sir, do you have time for abortion today?

Briar (airplane passenger): Wait, what? Aren't we on an airplane that has no destination? An indeterminate flight-time?

Sandra: yes…and women on this vessel need abortions, sir.

Briar: …

Sandra: If you'll allow them, sire! Excuse them!

Briar: …huh?

Sandra: Oh, give me a break. Clearly, you don't have time.

Briar: I was ju…

Sandra: …and if you did, you clearly don't value it all that much, as you're pissing it all away on this argument…

Briar: …rather than…

Sandra: something productive, you prick! I'm a human being, also!

Briar: I can see that…

Sandra: Get lost! I hope your part of the plane crashes and burns violently, tight eyes!

Briar: Tight eyes? What the…

Sandra: Fuck off, slimeball.

Cedrik (passenger, Briar's friend): What was that all about?

Briar: Did you hear that question?

Cedrik: Huh? No, she asked you a que…

Briar: "do you have time for abortion today?" …

Cedrik: A classic conman's hook

Briar: What are you gonna say to that? "No?"

Cedrik: I mean…

Briar: it was a con_woman_'s hook, you sleeze.

Cedrik: Woah! Don't take your embarassment out on me…

Briar: Shit. Sorry. It's just, I answered in such an honest way…

Cedrik: What'd you even say?

Briar: I was surprised. Abortions aren't the first thing you think of on an airplane.

Cedrik: And you think a random stranger on the plane would ask you that question…for…what? For fun?

Briar: I dunnoo…

Cedrik: Get a little snicker at another's tragic circumstances?!

Briar: Dude! We're not talking about anyone in particu…

Cedrik: A little guffaw at another's unfortunate predicament? Is that it?

Briar: Come on, don't be so loud!

Cedrik: You think the idea is something to joke about? You…you sicko!!?

Briar: What the hell, dude.

Cedrik: Sorry, but you tried to reflect that shit onto me and, again, sorry--but I'm invincible.

Briar: Well good for you.

Cedrik: You need to shake that shit out of you, bro.

Briar: Shake it? The fuck?

Cedrik: Yeah, like, think of all your experience as a kind of life-matter that is metabolised by the nervous system. Except, the digestive-nervous system tends to have a wide range of metabolising-rates dependent on the contents of the sensory meal.

Briar: Okay…and that all sounds like crockshit!

Cedrik: A crock-of-shit, and, to put it in a TLDR format: sometimes you don't shit after an experience for years or decades even. And you, you still have shit that's backing your system up.

Briar: My "system"?

Cedrik: Yeah, your ability to experience the moment, or, rather, your conception of the moment. Your interpretive apparatus.

Briar: …sure…

Cedrik: and so the backup is creating a pressure imbalance through your whole entire system. Throwing everything off. If the clogs aren't worked out before new experiences impose themselves on the nervous-system, then we start getting clogs-of-clogs.

Briar: Soooo….

Cedrik: So, you let your own perceived discomfort of the social situation become the focus of communication. The focus of conversation. So, you, unwittingly, have people circling around whatever bullshit you have going on that day relative to all the ongoing shit you've had going for god knows how long.

Briar: …

Cedrik: And the sad thing is, since most of us are all suffering our own imbalances--our own clogs--, we don't have the time or nervous capacity to realize that we're actually helping someone else metabolise their own imbalances--and, actually, it's not uncommon for people to actually self-immolate by the sheer hatred they seemingly sow themselves in incredibly intricate and creative ways.

Briar: …so? Like, clogging other peoples toilets?

Cedrik: So, you were probably confused by the sitaution, is all. Maybe you were attracted to the woman, but you also consider yourself a compassionate person and somewhere in your mind a contradiction is formed which kicks on that UNKNOWN alarm and the body gets to work predicting a future that it has not yet experienced before. However, in your case, the whole process short-circuited and you simply reduced yourself to a state of inncocent vulnerability. In realizing this, you became embarassed, and then freaked out, and so rendered yourself as someone shocked to think of abortion on an airplane, as you said it. Rather than just hearing the words and answering the question.

Briar: That's what I was…

Cedrik: Ah! Not quite. The unclogged system can answer however it wants. The point is that it knows what it wants. You, however, didn't. You were both horny and compassionate which don't absolutely coincide. Your communication was caught between being an attractive man as well as a philanthropic one, all in an ambiguous social context. You skewed toward the attraction, and so you insulted the interests of the woman asking you a question.

Briar: What, how?!

Cedrik: You spoke as if her question were rhetorical and interpreted it in precisely the opposite way it was intended to be brought up!

Briar: How was that?

Cedrik: Seriously! She was asking the question seriously!

Briar: But is it really so obvious that she should be taken seriously?

Cedrik: Look at this airplane! Look at the freeze-burning world below us!

Briar: And?

Cedrik: The worst case scenario is that you act seriously and she's joking. Is that really such a big deal?

Briar: I guess not…

Cedrik: Not unless you think that it's YOU being laughed at, you oaf! No, people laugh at the unexpected. Maybe you are funny, but one laugh from someone isn't gonna prove that. Want to know what would?

Briar: What?

Cedrik: A series of serious interactions where you remain vulnerable rather than masking it whenever it crops up.

Briar: I still don't…

The smell of red hot plastic

a smoldering neon goo.

for seventy-five cents,

three quarters on the dollar,

a memory, a keepsake

a dear old relic—

by taking the world around

and knitting it into a sweater,

a sweater spun from the wool of starry heavens,

its pointed and dotted pattern projecting

englowing a hazy and worldly shape.

in wearing this sweater, a mold is taken

of which the world is thereafter cast

everything taken inward, and only moving forward

in a clamorous and confounded fashion

the floundering senses never seem to catch a break.

so attention is entranced in these fraying loose-ends

of the starry sweater's pattern.

so many frayed flaws and mistakes in our manner

what wasn't yet known!

for it was not anything that was thought about too much

the sky of which the pattern was taken, it turns out

was rather dully lit, wasn't a thing to know of it.

it was without bright blemishes, perhaps

a few sad scintillating spots each never quite the same.

but to the whole of it—which was mostly all of it—

was entirely unknown.

as the sweater frays, so too did the veil it wrought.

patches to the elbows, flames to the frays?

or will another spool be spun

You and a friend could go out to a restaurant and enjoy a good meal together and you could both agree that it was amazing and phenomenal and delicious, but, in the end—I argue—you have done nothing but assume that the two of you have shared a good meal together.

In reality, you have no reason to assume this, but more importantly, you have no way of verifying this. No, no, I'm not arguing that a meal can only be enjoyed through the endless words of exhaustive pedantry, seeking to prove whether the two of you really did, in fact, enjoy the same meal to precisely the same degree with precisely the same satisfaction. My point is, rather, that neither of you have any interest in understanding what it was that you or the other so much enjoyed about the meal. Each left to their own experience, content to let the enjoyment remain as some passing mystery. A shame!

Now, what I do argue is that if you did understand this enjoyment mutually with your friend, you could then, on the very next day, go into your home kitchen and bring about your understandings together. You would both verify—in practice—that the two of you have an understanding of what was actually enjoyed—whether it was that particular degree of texture or that specific intensity of spice—by replicating the enjoyment through mutual understanding.

Moreover, the both of you would be satisfied in knowing that you share that much more of your living experience together. It's fine if you consider yourself a foodie or a food critic, if you eat out three or four times a day at all the finest establishments, but what is that enjoyment if it cannot be shared or communicated? If it cannot be replicated? Words alone do not convey your experience and experience does not give you its words. To share an experience is to work together in giving way to a shared reality. What good is a full stomach when the heart remains empty? When the mind exists alone?

Two friends moving about in two different worlds are, in fact, not friends. They are strangers that have not struggled to understand the world as one. But I digress, for this is another conversation.

Do you really care who you are?

What about other people?

and if they care who they are?

Do you care about other people?

Or perhaps you find your own individual misery

to be more important than all that?

Of course, now you are guilty—

as you should be and bringing more misery;

but even so,

what is the guilt of misery

other than misery itself?

It is self-carnivorous,

feeding on a vital-less energy

something that's long since burnt out;

but here it goes again,

the memory of the flickering flame

its licks and its fingers, pulsatingly bright

blocking and blotting out the vast night's sky.

Could you count the stars?

You know someone once named them.

Giving character to age-old cries

of suns now dead and dying

only a small bit of which

we are barely even a part;

like a teardrop—a salty little spot—just fallen from a quivering eye

such a mockery, so lack and languid, hanging there en potentia.

There is something in that which brings itself alight,

but not on the monies or wares of some great proprieter,

not upon the breaths of giants (and a false weight regardless).

Too much is painted too clearly, in our mind's perfect mementos,

all figure and form—statue and posture.

It's a mimic's land, and not the kindest to fools,

all wrapped up tightly in wool but with the eyes cut out.

Please do not forget

that down a gentle and grassy slope,

magma and lava too

then I am a ghost

We should never find ourselves obligated to formally define ourselves. Formal definitions of the individual are paradoxical as no individual can be entirely comprised in words or otherwise communicated reliably and entirely to another. We must settle for partial information through observation of the individual and only from these, recurring through time, can we make any determinations about another's character, let alone their [social] self.

Consider the idea that stories—narratives—are a personal construal of reality and that their dissemination is more akin to fabricating frames of interpretation (suggestion, persuasion) for the sake of influence and/or personal absolution (which need not align with anyone's pretenses or sentiments besides those of the author).

The point is, we all have a lived experience and all of our experiences are capable of being interpreted by ourselves. The only reality that can make any sense to any one particular individual is the one that the individual brings into focus on their own terms, in their own time, as a product of their own experience. The press, publishers, the media, entertainment and news, these are all forms of social influence and suggestion that ultimately operate in a top-down, few-to-many fashion. The creators, producers, writers of these products often peddle a stereotypical interpretation of reality that is all too easy to take as-is, and rather than thinking about our own particular circumstances relative to our own experience, we simply take the generalizations and emotional piques (as these are the most effective, if not crude, ways to communicate meaning to the largest general audience) to be the universal expectations of public and social behavior, adopting them as if they were our own interpretation of our own emotions. This is not true, as the truth can only be found if it is found by us and substantiated by our personal conviction through our personal understanding of our self and our experience.

Basically, many of us are full of anxiety stemming from our concerns of truly trivial things, like the spelling of words, or, even more perplexing, the use of particular punctuation in particular places. Think about these things. Why do these things matter? If I know perfectly well which word you are using, and if I can comprehend what is being said in your statement, then what could we possibly be concerned with? Are we trying to communicate? Or are we simply demanding that our subjective notions, usually something that we have very little understanding of ourselves, our spontaneous aesthetic, are we demanding that this is what matters most? If you demand this, you must be able to tell me this (so we can get that out of the way), otherwise, you are not concerned with communicating you are instead concerned with some kind of bizarre knowledge that, for some reason, you have conflated into your understanding of words as they are spoken, here in reality.

If we are trying to communicate, words (and all that they form) only matter insofar as we can make sense of them relative to each other. This does not mean that the choice of words or the way in which they are spoken doesn't matter, it's that it only matters to you. That's cool, but that's You, and You are not anyone else. To be clear, neither is anyone else You.

eighth-of-Sept.