13

with each passing year the new cars look more and more like insects.
insects are efficient I guess.
and now I hear the stars are for sale.
anyone who owns a star is on my shit list.
with each passing year big things become more confrontational if you let them.
like fields.
an empty field at 2am can peel away at the onion of my faith like nothing else can.
I try to nominate myself away from all such onions.
is the onion god? I don’t know. whatever it is, it oscillates.
it’s an oscillating onion.
too big to love, too absent to be big.
and sometimes: too absent
to love, too big to be absent.
I turn from the field and dwell on the goodness of no onion.

one never stops wanting to find oneself, even if one knows there is no base self to be found.
I.E. FALL 2006 / SPRING 2007:
I took some time off from school to ‘find’ myself.
I found myself all right.
found myself stoned in the mcdonald’s parking lot in my dunkin donuts visor.

it’s the old man at the coffee shop who has the answers/has the onion in his pocket.
it is impossible for me to look at him: first of all, it is necessary
to gaze at him if one is to observe him at all, and it’s like gazing at the sun.

gold watch.
white skullet.

he stares straight ahead, deep into his own wisdom, silent and still with his cup of coffee.
the only thing that can shake him from his zen is his own 2am field:
the radio playing “menha menha” by the muppets.
he twists his head around as if to contemplate: what the fuck is this,

surrendering to the mystery before it reduces him to admiration

12

oh to be the nurse who kisses your burn. it is a moot point. it is all a basket of moot points, parading in my mind. the basket of moot points laughs at my attempts to make sense. ha! it says. look at this precious (i.e. pitiful) creature, trying to make sense from feelings! I reach for a rice cake and try not to look back. it is hard not to look back when the thing you are trying not to look back at has the audacity to walk in front of you (thoughts of the object, not the object itself), although I am the first to admit one must first approve of the audacity and therefore consent to the confrontation, rice cake in hand. it is hard to conduct the day. it is hard to scramble an egg. it is hard to pursue the ideal of the breakfast before noon. the times and frequencies of meals indicate how close I am to attaining functional personhood, as established by the world around me, a world I increasingly trust with an ease that gives me permission to feel peace via the utilitarian truth of the meal routine. it is hard to determine if personhood really is at odds with the basket of moot points. at some point I hope it is not: one should not have to choose between the basket and full-time personhood. one can perform the personhood in the basket, ideally. one can kiss the burn and achieve the egg before noon. one can truly have it all. before one can have it all, one must first have oneself, though. one must learn to inhabit the body that performs the personhood in another’s basket, before one can feel the happiness of being in such a sexy place. one must first feel that their own basket is not weaved from barbed wire.