writing to you as A’ licentious Alice, a chalice, from AL by way of LA origin-ally, with houndstooth donned:
It is the sense of loving the moment. It is remembering the sensation of meta/physical love and then remembering the sensation of how it feels to lose it. That ache. That sense of how many times will they wreck me?. How many times will I play the Fool?
Again and again.
Why lose the Fool of yourself? If I killed the Fool inside to be hip, where did the real me go? With whom do you share your inner fool? Can guarding it be anything authentic?
In this mp3 and streaming world, a mix CD burned,
a cassette tapemade,
breaks my heart right open. Is that why we have one?
This is not sadness; it is a necessary devouring of self.
Here, where the desire to conduct currents raises meta/physical energy in the nerve endings concealed under my skin.
What a waste to not make use of it.
I would waste that energy on you alone.
Waste it in the face of
your silence.
I will howl until you howl back, to punish you.
Does that spook you,
you ghost of the man of May?
Giggle-snarl.
I espied your inconsistency immediately since taking my flight of departure.
Curious.
It was my mistake. I should not have allowed you to let me leave. I thought I was being kind, but I was only being polite. Stay. That’s what I really meant to say or do this time.
I abide still. I stoke fires. I test the limit.
I care for you. That is all. I can unconditionally hold you(,) dear.
My love is not tethered to needing love.
My devotion is my loyalty to my beloved. You endeared yourself to me.
I desire you. Now you must suffer the cost of your own, odd charms.
It is no matter of ‘should’ you, but rather, ‘could’ you
tell me true?
If you could, I hold you(,) dear.
If you could not, I hold you(,) dear.
<>
There is heavy magic in your air and I am magnetized.
Some integral things reduce to simple vibrations, to sounds, to sounds like bays, being transmitted through our air.
I wrote all these words first
in longhand to show you how inane I can be.
How frighteningly unafraid
you could be,
should you so choose, ewe.
Or, perhaps, your hands are tied.
Perhaps you have no choice but to be so.
I learn the record of your timeframes
still.
Deliciously diabolical it seems: both your pleasure and your desperation.
Does it make you forget which side of the road on which you ought to be driving?
Were you just checking out your mojo?
Taking me for a ride in your fast car?
There. Am I impressed?
Hum.
Good question.
Can you answer this: if I told you that your heart belongs to me now, would you hold your head up high in the air?
Could you even if you wanted?
Could you even say if you didn’t?
The difference between ‘can’ and ‘may.’
Simon says he went birdwatching but only saw his own feet.
Not many birds to be seen in that scene?
Just grounded, flightless birds, you adorable dodo.
<>
I saw a porcupine ripping out its own quills,
one by one by one,
by one at a time.
Onlookers horrified at the sight of so much blood.
The porcupine stabs them while they are stunned into stillness by the reverie-stupor of their surprise.
Southern, punky in their style, given that they came from Georgia (albeit the artist’s savehaven of Athens which is historically known for its indie music scene).
I dig them much. Great players with dynamic, live charisma.
The vocal echo being sung after Stipe’s gives me chills.
They are geniuses at subtlely. Their content gets revolutionary for their context, but it is only whispered. Very articulately. And, their appeal across the spectrum is undeniable. A rare combo.
He heard him directly asked twice, separately, and all he would give up is:
I work here.
He returns nightly.
He emerges from the back of house with a
fresh bus rag. He flaps it,
like a matador,
before folding it into a small square.
He does not even give up
a smile.
He magically produces a broom and dust pan to
sweep the carpet.
They don’t make ’em like that anymore?
Hardest working man in show business.
<>
The smell of cologne breaks through, suddenly.
I breathe it in deep. Try to see the source.
That was a fun song: the singer says, tuning his guitar.
He and the fellow on keys banter between songs. Long enough to be ready for the next song. Not too long.
The bass and drums do not laugh along or smile.
The funky bassist.
There is a reason he is front and center.
He has no mic. He does not solo.
Nothing is the only part he overplayed.
He is perfectly on point. Tight.
Anchoring.
A self-indulgent guitar solo becomes necessary at his command.
The guitarist announces the set break.
We now pause for this brief station identification: I think.
Guitar and keys wander out the back door
to the smoker haven.
Bass bums around with the crowd.
The perfectly understated drummer (rarest of the rare) escapes my awareness.
I look up at the screen above me and am informed carpet is being liquidated.
I stop looking at the screen.
The bassist is the first to return to his position.
Standing in his spot. Waiting.
The drummer appears moments later. Seated at his station.
Tick, tick.
The bassist sits down on an amp and starts playing along with the song on the jukebox.
/gotta have that funk/
You got it: I think.
He plucks a quick harmonic, wrapping up, as the guitar and keys return to the stage.
Stands back up, he takes his place between the two.
Guitar and the fellow on keys banter. Long enough to be ready for the next song. A bit closer to too long this time.
Tuning strings, the singer says: all right. We are gonna play the same set for you all over again…you guys look like you’re having a good enough time that you won’t even notice.
Hell, half of ’em probably don’t realize that you are a cover band: I think.
Deep cuts selected.
Covers of covers.
An undercover, cover band.
<>
Clearing empties and wiping away the sticky of slightly, sloshed beer spills,
R. stops by my table.
He calls me by first and last name.
When did I tell you that information, sly, observant one?
(Kindly let me know if my math does not tally below. I tried to check and recheck it, but…)
<◇>
Q: When was 120 minutes ago from now?
A: It was two hours ago.
<◇>
When was one hundred and sixty four billion (164,000,000,000) minutes ago?
Hum, huh?
~
My illiteracy with numbers occurs at a certain threshold.
Numerical literacy*? Not my strong suit. So, I play with numbers, with what I can imagine.
For example, I can imagine a triangle, a square, a pentagram, a hexagon, a septagon, an octagon. But, I cannot imagine, or see in my mind’s eye what a 25 sided polygon would look like. I would have to try to draw it.
There is a 10,000 sided polygon, called a myriagon, according to geometry.
I will take their word for it because I cannot imagine being able to imagine what that would actually like.
~
I am not monied. The difference between one million dollars and one billion dollars? Well, sure, ‘orders of magnitude’, but I only understand that in the abstracted sense. The practical difference between such huge numbers is not immediately obvious to me. But, the news, scientific research, and governments, regularly inundate us with such large numbers.
~
Do a thought experiment with me? I wanna know:
Q1. How far could the millions of dollars, comprising a billion dollars, go?
Q2. If I had one hundred and sixty four billion dollars (as I hear someone in America truly does) and I gave away one million dollars per day, how many days before I am broke? Let’s pretend I keep my $164,000,000,000.00 in cash in a safe. That means my money is not making more money via interest, returns, dividends.
If I have one billion dollars in cash, let’s imagine it’s kept in one million dollar bills. I would have one thousand of these million dollar bills.
I could give one of the $1,000,000 bills everyday for 1,000 days before running out of money.
If there are 365 days a year, 1,000 days is about 2.75 years.
The difference between a million and a billion, practically speaking?
A1. You can give away $1,000,000.00 everyday for almost three years before exhausting $1,000,000,000.00
So, how much more than 1 billion dollars is 164 billion dollars, practically speaking?
Well, if it takes 1,000 days, of giving away 1 million dollars each day, to get rid of a billion dollars;
It would take 164 times longer to give away $164,000,000,000.00 than it would take to give away $1,000,000,000.00
1,000 x 164 = 164,000 days
164,000 days = 449 years and a few months.
If I had $164,000,000,000 ($164 billion), I could give away $1,000,000 ($1 million) everyday for 449 years.?
Fuck.
Now that I see it this way it only raises more, honest questions from an ignorant me.
How much money do people need?
And why? To what end and what do they intend?
______________
*My own numerical illiteracy was introduced to me by a slim, charming book called Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos which I found tucked away in the statistician’s, my father, bookcase.
WrittenCasey 