softcollapse

If an animal has previously suffered escapable shock, and then she suffers inescapable shock, she will be happier than if she has previously not suffered escapable shock — for if she hasn’t, she will only know about being shocked inescapably.

But if she has been inescapably shocked before, and she is put in the conditions where she was inescapably shocked before, she will behave as if being shocked, mostly. Her misery doesn’t require acts. Her misery requires conditions.

If an animal is inescapably shocked once, and then the second time she is dragged across the electrified grid to some non-shocking space, she will be happier than if she isn’t dragged across the electrified grid. The next time she is shocked, she will be happier because she will know there is a place that isn’t an electrified grid. She will be happier because rather than just being dragged onto an electrified grid by a human who then hurts her, the human can then drag her off of it.

If an animal is shocked, escapably or inescapably, she will manifest deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her. If she has manifested deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her, she will manifest deeper reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her and then dragged her off the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for electrified grids. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. She may also develop deep feelings of attachment for science, laboratories, experimentation, electricity, and informative forms of torture.

If an animal is shocked, she will manufacture an analgesic response. These will be incredible levels of endogenous opioids. This will be better than anything. Then later, there will be no opioids, and she will go back to the human who has shocked her looking for more opioids. She will go to the shocking condition — called “science” — and there in the condition she will flood with endogenous opioids, along with cortisol and other things which feel arousing.

Under a bare sky I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body, he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years. He held my hand with a trembling hand. ‘Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile. Look, further on ahead, there between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.

And I carried to that emptiness between us the birds that had been calling out

        all night. I carried an old         bicycle, a warm meal,          some time to talk. 

I would have brought them to you sooner but was afraid your own

        hopelessness would keep you         crouched there. If you spring up,          let it not be against me

but like a weed or a fountain. I grant you the hard spine of your

        childhood. I grant you         the frowning arc of this morning.          If I could I would grant you

a bright throat and even brighter eyes, this whole hill of olive trees, its

        calmness of purpose.          Let me not forget         ever what I owe you. 

I have loved the love you felt for those gardens and I would grant you

        the always steadying         presence of seeds.         I bring to that trouble

between us a bell that might blur into air. I bring the woods and a sense of what lives there. 

So says my friend who doesn't know it now But he's been conscripted to say what I shouldn't Want anyone to say too soon, too suddenly, too many times More than must be said. It's a tall order, or as another friend says A tall drink of water, otherwise: it's plain & simple: What anyone wants most of all. Another friend tells me I'm easy and means something sweetly as when One caves with the slightest shudder somehow thoroughly. Another says what you say should be in a poem which means Someone is taking for me the trouble to breathe, maybe fire. Lucidity, quick and painlessly employed, kind of, as a kind nurse employs Her rough pinch to be less strict than her needle's as it settles into a vein To take sufficient blood away somewhere to be deployed in centrifuge

To diagnose and otherwise and likewise and counterclockwise say,    the way

Metaphor or blood can have the last word. In order to be sure of    what the 

Center is, everything has to spin away, I guess. Your words like     a lost ghost