Literature
Compound the difference between want & need
with
the difference between need and neediness.
The equation yields an instrumental derivative that is also
an instructive integral,
Because the positive and negative space of herringbone (trans. houndstooth) patterns cannot be distinguished, the resulting visual is
like liquid words
wherein you may read yourself as the narrator or the audience.
Delicious dichotomy of the impeccably complementary.
The lunch rush of the little restaurant passes by two p.m.
I feel a hand lightly touch my shoulder.
How does being driven to distraction feel?: he asks.
Like being hyper-focused yet still clicking the submit button and immediately realizing your digital letter included a typo.: I reply.
Most people include typos in their writing, these days.: he replies.
Not me.: I say.
So your precious words betrayed you?: he asks.
No, they were instructive as regards the affect of your distraction.: I say.
So, I am effective?: he teases.
At the least, the effect you produce in me is no affectation on my behalf: I concede.
And, I wonder: will it still swim in my stomach when I return to handle the dinner rush tonight?
I am the subtle magnetic force trying to kindly shift
your aged space and the immediacy of your moments.
Or, is that you?
Pulls of the polarized enliven me.
Maybe I am your current, optimal conditions,
an ideal, unidyll ether enabling materialization.
I see from the lonely vacuum without feeling alone.
Electric light and natural radiance.
A backlit screen,
The sun striking the pages of written text in a newly opened book.
Lidar and black holes howling in polite algorithmic rhythm.
The Oxford comma not being used within
sentences always running-on.
⊙
A’stood between two pillars of trees
with bark gnarled from time,
coarse like hands that can carry wood and graphite,
my writing flows
forward and backward.
And, simply saying, “hush” can be a come and turn-on to the fretted strings.
⊙
I see success is your proof; and, it
arouses need to draw your reaction.
Your attention.
So when you ask: Do you see?
I respond: I know.
Because I want to hear
You ask me: you know what, exactly?
i know my eyes want to watch your eyes: I reply with sheepishly calculated vulnerability.
⊙
I can see you enter a hypothetical room and
stand still.
Hell knows what I’d be doing, but
I know
I would stop doing it at the sight of your site.
To read you, without words,
your reaction. The response received from your eyes, without smiles.
Feeling as a fool tossing a coin with the Fates.
⊙
I ran with you in dreams last night: I say.
And, I understood the difference between a cagey connoisseur and a common collector: I think.
A coattailer or a partner in crime.
You tell me: your hair is a kudzu trail twisting down a terrace in tresses of winding locks.
⊙
These things are integral, like a well-timed laugh,
yet, they reduce to simple vibrations and shudders.
I live by a body of water
that is a sound oft confused for a bay.
But, my bays sound
like a whispered suggestion:
Come and bathe with me, Archimedes.
After days of varying sobriquets
[Dimples, Goldilocks, Curly Sue, At the Bat]
Amber Eyes has become my daily moniker to Shelia and Don.
She grabs me, everyday, this intense mid-eighty year old lady.
Everyday, she grasps my face between her palms,
holding my cheeks to keep my head still.
[Serious(ly).]
She pushes her face inches from mine
and stares into my eyes.
As if to make sure that I am who I appear to be.
Are the eyes, in fact, amber?: I swear I cam intuit her asking herself,
before proceeding.
I take a deep breath, knowing what will follow: secrets.
Heavy ones. Ex-drama teachers seem to always have them.
It is 9 a.m. and I still force myself to meet her eyes and listen.
⊙
A man arrives.
Single diners can be sensitive.
Especially when a restaurant hostess says: just one today.
So, I do not say this.
Hi. Good to see you. How can I help?: I say.
He takes my hand as he removes his sunglasses.
He speaks with an accent I cannot identify.
I hear him say: I’d like a date.
Pardon?: I ask. Hand still in his.
I’d like to eat: he says motioning to his mouth.
I smile.
I can help with that. Right this way: I say, leading him to the bar,
hand still held by his.
There is one elder lady at the bar.
He sits five seats away from her.
She collects her things and leaves.
I think nothing of it.
“I love you,” server J. says.
I know: I tease: but what makes you tell me?
You made the racist leave: she says.
Huh?: I am confused.
That was the woman from yesterday. The one who I told you the story about. She took off when she saw him: she says with a big smile.
It was Mother’s day a year ago when this woman revealed her ignorance. Well before I started working here. The story was worse than any I had witnessed in Alabam’.
Point her out next time, so I can tell her we don’t serve her kind here. Many of these old white folks, all look the same to me: I say, not joking.
⊙
I get cut when the rush dies.
I stop by the hardware store to buy a pint. Jane is working. She is my favorite.
You must be done working. It’s good to get off your feet: she smiles.
Aww, you remember me. That means a lot.: I say and mean.
We meet so many people.: she says.
I smile.
Yup. Ya know I worked from a chair, in front of a computer, for many years. Turns out I’m better, happier, on my feet. Plus, I am a bit reclusive. It’s good for me to talk to all these people: I say.
We are all actors. You and I are good ones because we are authentic.: she says.
I freeze at her gravity. I look into her eyes. In silence.
You know me. I appreciate you. I also appreciate your help today.: I say.
She grins.
I exit and feel energy coursing.
It was a sub terrain keystone cavern of cathedral proportions, carved out from the processes of semi-precious, conductive mineral excavations.
I dreamt I lived underwater, there,
in a little house on the floor of
the Sound,
it was filled with water.
It rained heavy droplets of oxygen,
pattering on the tin roof.
I drop my pen, it slowly floats downwards.
You catch it with your mouth, before it reaches the ground.
Your eyes look up at mine with pride.
I see you shiver.
I silently say: Come and let’s lie down together; you on your back.
I wrap my legs around you, and
slide my thighs and calves against yours,
rubbing limbs like how crickets sing,
until you are warm.
Satisfied sighs bubble from your lips.
You keep shivering well after becoming warm.
No music rights: just homage to a soundtrackscape.
⊙
I am sick like dog: I say in my bestest, thickest Eastern European accent to the chef.
I am too ignorant to have a specific dialect, but the rasp in my voice is too deep to not enjoy, even if it hurts.
Ill since three a.m. The tasty haze of the deliciously grey day suits my fever.
⊙
Seven
a.m. texts go out.
1. The manager working.
I say: Ain’t well. Looking for a cover. If you don’t hear from me again, it means you guys are stuck with me doing my best.
I include exactly zero emoti-cons.
2. The potential covers.
I say: I’m sick. Host this morning?
⊙
No cover expected. Restaurant folk, generally do not rise before the early afternoon, at best, unless they are working. Were situations reversed, I would not come through either.
I sit on the patio and watch the day arrive between seven and eight.
Still and grey.
/Buckle up and endure, now, sweet thing./
I take puffs off my electronic nicotine machine, knowing full well it will help nothing.
My inhaler: I love calling it.
⊙
Ya know I can’t cite the source, but I recall a study saying folks are statistically more likely to prefer being shocked with a low charge, over sitting in a room, alone, in silence for fifteen minutes.
So I put on an album called electro shock blues.
I don’t mind stillness. I can shock myself with my own thoughts.
So who is the glutton for pain? The ones who like a bit of shock-pain because being alone is too painful or the ones who get off on stillness?
/well, hee hee hee hee/
⊙
/Next thing you know/ You’re eat’n hospital food/
⊙
I arrive to work. I am released and sent home after an hour. I think they wanted see if I would show up and try.
It’s good to have reasons to persevere and
over-come:
I say and i mean.
Because I get off on my intent to not let feeling bad make others feel bad or me feel worse.
Seems quite silly to say, as I put it into words now.
I am mostly light and love, but with a little bit of why-don’t-you-go-fuck-yourself for counterbalance.
⊙
Back home.
Bare beneath a grey robe.
Leg warmers over calves and most of my feet.
Earl Gray tea with a bit of cream and vanilla extract.
An American Werewolf in London Faux-Fog: I silently entitle the bootleg concoction, in homage of the traditional London Fog tincture.
⊙
Back on the patio.
The wind chops and dices the waters of
the Sound
into tiny, white-capped waves.
Little peaks of liquid mountains.
⊙
/What/
/What/
/I can hear you/
/I was…/
⊙
/Sing the one about the cat that’s always get’n wet/
Comes down the wires, from my tablet, into my Blue headphones.
I giggle.
Restless a.m.
I
Ayes running through my mind’s eyes like little cottontails scrambling into the brambles.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Robins bobbling around for worms.
The only animals appearing sleepy are tethered. A dog walking a human.
⊙
A clot of hair collects about a nail head that is pounded into the railing.
I suppose it is mine.
Strands tugged a’loose like feathers, after the daily ritual of:
arrive home, sit outside, and, let the waves down.
Like little feathers lost only to be reassembled into
a new configuration.
A merkin for the metal.
Forward and up.
A tightrope walker knows to not look down
when toeing a path
across the line.
When nothing makes sense
Abandon yourself to the terrorifically awful awesome.
Control and compliance, there is a
subtle difference in
Berger the Maverick.
“Perspective centers everything on the eye of the beholder.”
A rising reddening mountain
set against my pink sky.
States of matter change.
Snow returns to the peak,
with the seasonal shift.
Dripping downwards.
More will follow,
like bulbs remembering how to
burst forth in full bloom,
after being held back in a hard
petal enclosure.
The chill in the air smells like the last time I fell in love.
Knitted woolen leg warmers donned. Chestnut brown and unraveling from overuse.
My sister gave me three pairs, last year.
“You want, like, Flash Dance legwarmers for your birthday?” she asked.
“Yeah, I am standing on my toes these days.”
An hour ’til I walk to the restaurant.An hour of coffee, words, and nicotine.
I will pluck my heavy comforter (trans. duvet) from storage after work.
⊙
I seat a one top.
Coffee?: I ask
I insist on it: he says.
We have that in common.
No cream. Bring white sugar if you have it: he says.
White sugar?: I think.
Kat, do we have white sugar already on the table?: I ask, unsure what white sugar means.
Bleached sugar, you mean?: she asks.
Smiling, I say: dunno. He wants white sugar. Those words.
Well, we have raw sugar, nutrisweet, sweat n’ low, and truevia in packets on the tables. We have Splenda packets here, just in case. Brown sugar for breakfast…:
The dishwasher (who provided his own sobriquet [call me MC BlackCoffee: he told me, when I first started] ) interrupts her.
He wants this: he says, holding a shaker the size of two coffee cups stacked on top of each other.
What kind of sugar do you call this: I ask him.
The good kind: he says.
We need to reevaluate your nickname. Sugared coffee is not black coffee: I tease.
Don’t change the color, does it?: he nods, smiling.
⊙
Server T. touches my shoulder: the guy at table six has a book for you.
Oh, word. I was hoping he would make good: I say.
How do you know him? He wasn’t sure if you were the right person. Plus, you just seated him.: he says confused and a bit irritated I had let one guy sit at his four top.
I don’t know him. I didn’t recognize him: I reply.
He shrugs. I smile.
Two nights ago, I discovered this server knew philosophy as well as, if not better than, me. And, he discovered a coworker that could keep up with him. We had discussed the very book table six has brought me. He seemed happy.
~
I met table six when he came in for breakfast a few days before. I noticed him reading a Martin Gardner book.
I dig that guy: I say.
This seventyish year old man looked up at me. I recall one eye not opening all the way, although both eyes appear open today.
I found Hofstadter, Penrose, and Feynman through him: I say.
He stared at me.
He wants to be left alone: I think.
I walk away, after offering: I’ll leave you to enjoy.
As he left, he stopped by my hostess post and asked: how did someone your age find out about these guys.
Well, I was ten years younger in Alabama selling collegiate clothing in a boutique and I got very bored.
~
I go up to table six. He has brought me his second copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, thoughtfully wrapped in plastic as it rains heavy. This was a gateway book for me and I lost my copy during my move from AL to WA. I am thrilled a copy has found it’s way back to me.
What kind of restaurant is this? You and my server is a philosophy graduate.: he says, looking quite serious.
One that is open to hiring ex-academic flaneurs: I joke.
I have him sign and date the book.
By the way, your server is also a third degree black belt: I mention.
~
Server T says: Don’t you think it’s funny we were just talking about that book the other night?
Ha, I am surprisingly unsurprised. Things like this happen a lot to people like us, don’t you think?: I respond.
Well, I think there would be some observer bias in such a thought: he says, quite rightly.
But, observer bias is unavoidable by definition because we are observers at every moment. What are your thoughts on metaphysics?: I push him.
I try to avoid metaphysics. Too messy.: he says, walking away.
Yeah, yeah. That’s what all you philosophers say these days. Too messy and too close to mysticism: I call out as much to myself as to him.
A pair of legs splayed to show well placed snaps.
“Undo them.”
That’s what he said.
I do.
“You want to feel the rise of my serpent up your spine’s
base.”
I roll over for this rude awakening.
This gal loves a good interview with interesting speakers.
Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young, Johnny Lydon, the list goes on,
Anon, anon.
But, this one….oh howl, I love this one.
A rare confluence of different energies, including the audience’s, along with a tennis-like art of arguement.
Style.
I love hyper-intellectuals flying their idiosyncratic flags.
“I am here and I am becoming very, very bored.”
“I have to tell you a quote from Tolstoy?”: Cavett to Mailer.
“Are you really all truly idiots, or is it me?”: Mailer to audience.
Howlaciously howlarious.
“It was the voice of Legion’s.”
“The difference is I’d savo(u)r the quote and you’ve thrown it into the battle.”
“Oh, for goodness sake.”
I dreamt I was a sweet, sly serpent.
I wrapped myself around you, into a möbius strip.
Eating my own tail.
Skin ceaselessly shifting
and sliding against yours.
We wrestled playfully in the numina of everywhere and
know-where.
Your face flowed like magma, between two appearances: the face of a man burning into that of the red fox.
My infinite sliding scale skin tethered your temporary
states of flux.
Before sound, there was vibration
with no auricular structure to perceive it.
Before these trinities came dualities.
Before syncretism came juxtaposition.
Before leverage moved mountains
and swept us off our feet,
the mechanical principle
existed unnamed.
All awaiting discovery
in this hollow solidity.
Before photons,
ours was
the luminiferous ether, the medium through which light moves.
falling like waves
Issuing ever out in concentric circles
(within concentric circles)
《[Ego centrism
Of gEo centrists.
A vessel never falls off the horizon.
Our sight line drops off; and
the feet of another appear to
grow smaller (and smaller)
as s/he walks away from you.》
But, there was no motion detected.
A wave and a particle,
both either, as well as neither,
hidden ether.
Rods and shafts of sunlight.
Fighting-as-discipline haunts me with every new face I meet. (Invariably they are black belts, INK’D athletes, ex MMA fighters, etc.)
Cannily uncanny. It may be inspiring my clip this morning. I certainly find the trend personally inspiring. The same way the numbers 93, 13, 11, and 777 hook my attention. Do I see them at every turn because they occur in a disproportionate amount or do my expectations simply enliven significance?
My feet carry my brain to work, propelled as though by the will of something outside of my conscious thought.
I walk too fast. I don’t know why. Mind still foggy from tying one on with the family last night.
Damn. I can barely keep up with my own pace.: I think, walking.
Click, click.
Click, click.
Quick.
Oh well, the energy required to change my momentum seems more consuming than just continuing to walk along, too fast.
It is a grey sky morning.
Have I actually woken up?
°
The sun finally arrives and beats the cloud cover into smashed splinters. It makes the day seem real. I feel my heart finally kick start, keeping rhythm with the coffee coursing through my system.
Howllelujah.: says the newly given up ghost,
in a whisper of surrender to this new day.
After the morning shift, I stop by a bar.
Watching the last ten minutes of an American football game, the crowd here breaks into applause and hoots for the local team.
For the images on t.v.
(For each other.)
“We look good.”
We? No, dear, “they”. They are not you.
Five minutes later the crowd breaks into “boo”, “oh no”, “why,” along with some judgements and criticisms.
“They should have…”
Oh, it is “they” not “we” now, huh?
Giggle.
The 12th man is always the loudest?
A short completed pass results in the “other” team’s receiver getting gobsmacked by a defender
“They lit him up” I offer.
I like lit people.
“I am gonna need you to get a little more excited about this game,” the fellow aside me at the bar jokes.
Despite being kind, I am not daft.
I can sense patronizing intent from miles away.
“And, Ima need you to not tell me how to handle my business” I smile. Teasing him.
I will poke the bear to see his response.
He has no clue how to respond. He does not realize I am giving him the business.
The British invasion occured today, at the restaurant.
A delightful change of clientele in town for Birdfest.
Aside from the accent, the nearly, overly polite manners gave them away.
Along with the ability to smile and make kindly eye contact despite not having had their morning caffeine.
Who cares if they mean it.
Such civility for the sake of simple decency resonates with my Southern background. The South has little else to offer, currently. Hence, my leaving a few years ago.
(Serving people who have arrived to have their first cuppa in our dining room is always an intimate moment of raw honesty. Coffee, tea, or booze).
They enjoy my accent as much as I enjoy their’s. They laugh when I say ‘y’all’.”
I say it a lot. Habituated.
“Most practical pronoun in American English. Much better than ‘you all/guys’,” I tease.
Server P over hears this.
S/he snags me by my shoulder and, laughing, tells me, “I like ‘y’all’ as much as I prefer ‘they/them’!”
It makes me giggle. It makes me feel good to hear this.
Until today, coffee out ordered tea.
Eight to one.
We run out of tea pots to distribute, for the first time ever.
I convert our decaf urn to a simple pot of hot water, to meet the refill demands.
¤
A solo diner arrives.
I wave as I approach from the rear of the dining room, so he knows he has been espied and will be assisted as fast as my heels can click my steps toward him
“Oh gee, hi there. How are you? It is just me, I am afraid,” he says to the hostess (me) before she (me) has even greeted him.
I break into my you-are-dear-to-me smile, immediately.
He was not British, though he held the manners and demeanor.
He had me in age by at least one and a half decades.
Long lovely fingers, nearly sky eyes but not quite.
Like a mockingbird’s.
Like a seagull’s call, cackling at me, because I kept wanting to mistake him for someone else.
We swap a good moment.
He looks a bit bewildered when I tell him I can seat him at a table or he may sit at the bar.
I have put him on the spot and he does not know which he prefers. It makes him genuinely squirm a bit.
Most American folk are most happy to be asked for their opinion. People love to let you know that they think “this” about “that.”
“Tell you what, our best server is bartending today. You should enjoy her service. Let’s go the bar.”
He blushes, nods; and, again,
I want to mistake him for someone else.
I lead him to
seat 35, specifically.
I watch him as I work, this sweet, little, mockingbird.
He watches me working, when he thinks I am not looking, but my job here is to always be looking.
I watch him try to subtlety watch me.
I avert my gaze, at times.
Eventually, I can no longer refrain.
I walk over to him and say, “I just want you to know you have such beautiful eyes. Exceptional.”
He gives me a look of shock and discombobulated confusion.
I touch my palm to his shoulder and walk away.
‘Exceptional’ because he recalls someone shamefully impeccable.
I notice
a bonfire,
(alit via a couple of cotton balls, a lighter, and a tube of
lip balm)
burning high,
(especially when being properly blown into)
sounds a lot like a needle, with
a diamond tip,
sliding around and around,
a viynl record’s groove.
Shhhhtshhht.
Right before the song starts.
Highly excited about this dreaming experience.
Regular readers (thank you!) probably have noticed howl much I dig using [howl] in my writing. I say it in my daily life as well. I bellow it, in silence, at night. (You have to be quiet it the flat where I stay, see.)
I have lucid dreamed since being a young child. I realize I am dreaming quite quickly in the dream state.
Sometimes this realization empowers me to change the dream consciously. Sometimes, I realize I am dreaming but do not realize I may be able to alter the dream state. (But, howl. Why change a new experience for what you assume would be better? The idea does not occur unless I feel real suffering.)
Many times, dreams feel like another plane of reality upon which I have landed, where, the best I can do, upon realizing I am dreaming, is to choose to try to wake myself up.
I am overly familiar with the sensation of sleep paralysis. Of becoming mentally conscious before being able to move my body. It is a weird feeling, but I have never felt the terror others describe when experiencing the sensation. No aliens. No demons. Just a simple inconvenience.
“Oh, howl. I gotta sit here and think, ‘wiggle your big toe. wiggle your big toe,’ ” for what seems like an eternity.
Eventually, my big toe actually wiggles.
Enough context.
Here is the dream.
⊙
I stand at the top of several flights of stairs.
Wooden floors.
An old, antebellum-style home.
Southern gothic.
Crown molding with runners.
There are no lights and
A strike of lightning flashes. I see a very, strangely, white child appear on a bench, below. Situated upon the first landing, one flight of stairs, below.
Right before the stairs cut around to the next segment of their spiral.
He looks up, directly at me.
His eyes go wide.
Yawning like mouths.
Too wide.
I do not want to be here. It hurts more than it needs to.
Instead of thinking: wiggle your big toe,
I say, softly,: howl.
I know that I am dreaming. I cannot change the dream.
I want to wake up.
I start bellowing out:
HOOOOOWL.
Lightning strikes again. It illuminates the same bench.
Now, there are ten more children, with yawning eyes, where there had previously been only one.
I howl myself awake.
Serendipitously, “howl” took over and took care of me.
WrittenCasey 