A Warning
Today I feel better, because I woke thinking everything that disappears from the planet might reappear somewhere else. The thought was grand at first. I imagined the dodo, silly and lost forever, still alive in some other dimension. Inevitably, though, the thought became smaller. I tried to save it by imagining the dodo’s core ingredients recycled and assimilated into otherness: absorbed by predators or scavengers, turned into dirt. I began to care less about form. If my body broken into atoms still exists, then the loss of my body is not a true loss, for I was only briefly human. Yesterday, when I woke, I felt not so good, because I realized that every day the possibility of my sleeping with two women at the same time diminishes. A sad thought first thing in the morning. It only proves how ridiculous thinking can be: the wrong thought can waylay all other plans and send one into a daylong daydream about Porno World, where the best career you can have is plumber or pizza-delivery guy. And now I am sad once again because it is unpleasant to realize that both thoughts carry equal weight in my mind: a world where nothing dies because everything still exists, and a world where beautiful women call you up to fix their television but decide they’d like to fuck you instead. I thought of their mouths on my body, and also I thought of the dodo being not extinct but opening a fragment of sky low to the horizon — even the air at our feet is sky — and stepping through into dodo heaven, becoming the dodosattva, but still essentially a large, flightless bird, easy to catch, pleasant of taste. Now it occurs to me that even if the dodos came back, I wouldn’t be happy for long. And even if two bisexual roommate stewardesses suddenly ravished me midflight, eventually I would want more than that — more mouths, more women — and even smothered under the weight of their passion somehow I would want more flesh, less air. Nothing ever goes away enough or arrives enough, and I want to cry when I think of my heart, muscle pounding in muscle, greedy always for joy.
The Parable of the Room Spinning
The needle goes in the groove, and “Please, Mr. Postman” becomes my first dance at ten years old, with my teenage baby sitter — for mercy’s sake I won’t name her — who held my young hand over my head and said, Now spin. Now spin, even after the music had stopped, laughing until I threw up all over her room. I know the science. The eyes tell the brain the body is stationary, but the tiny oceans inside the ears say the body is still whirling, reckless, so the brain, longing always for solutions, says, Oh, it must be the room that is spinning. What we see is a lie, and so is what we feel, and yet both lies remain our nearest truth, or at least as true as the 7-Up, the towels, and the fresh T-shirt the baby sitter brought forth as apologies. Fearful they weren’t enough, she leaned close and opened my mouth with her tongue. Don’t tell. I understand this moment of human weakness. I forgive it, the way I forgive my brain — not friend, not enemy, only confused by the relentless stimuli, the nonstop data, the dizzying music of the world.
