trying to wake up this time

I wish to understand the flow of the river and also an algebra textbook. Is there any species other than the human that can live and persist amidst such confusion? I think I’ll spin around in a circle until I reach the edge of vomit and look up at the sky. I’d like to feel the earth spinning in a way that is bodily, not rational, not absolute. The only thing I know is that I cannot lie to myself about myself. In that sense I am the center of my universe, my body is the axis on which I expand into space. I’ve wished for brilliant dreams and I’ve received them. I’ve received them upon the infinitude of my body. 

I’m vaguely interested in dying for art, but I haven’t found a mode to exhibit my commitment to this proclamation. Eventually, a family of artists must come to a generation of apex and death. Not martyrdom, or an overinvestment in self pity, but a set of children increasingly radicalized toward artistic revolution. It’s a clean sweep, a belief in the great safety net of dying in the gerund. At various points I’ve attempted to hit the ground running, and slowing to a crawl this catalog is an attempt to stimulate my life. The writing, while I hope captivating, does not exist for the purpose of the reader. Any incidental aesthetic beauty is the bone I throw to myself. The memories on which I plan to expound are needed breaks from grinding through meditations and hopefuls for the invigoration of more thought. 

I’m thinking about cruising through the city. Jumping the turnstile to Brighton Beach in the dead of winter with Sadie and feigning toward the aquarium, wordlessly agreeing not to go, not to spend the money. Instead we meet a man outside a vast housing project on the beach with a bootleg version of a videogame Sadie wants to play and stroll down the beach until we hit the amusement park. I’ve been taking photos of her and she hasn’t been saying much. We walk down every boardwalk jutting into the ocean and I ask each fisherman if he’s caught anything. I ask for fun, and cause Sadie likes it when I approach them. I had to look it up, cause the fisherman always say they haven’t caught anything, but apparently there’s mackerel, cod, and bass to be had at the mouth of the Hudson. They never catch anything. They’re just meditating I think, just making the ocean a metaphor. I hum “Only Living Boy in New York” (too on the nose) while we meander through the carnival and take the hairpin turn under the subway and watch the Russian grocers pull down the portcullises and chat with the gangsters. We’re sipping ice water from Dunkin’ Donuts and making for home after doing nothing in particular. I can’t even remember what we did after we got off the train. I don’t remember where we went. On this day we completed a mediation, moving from Chinatown to Fort Greene to the beach to amnesia.