“Perfectly bifurcated”: on the right side below me, brickwork walkway, grass, and the right side of myself; on the left side below me, a beige concrete with grey aggregate walkway and the left side of myself. The line of division between the beige concrete and its brickwork trim perfectly bisects me, perfectly mirrors the line of the seam on the crotch of my pants, and I feel myself to be “bifurcated.”
(Before I can properly enjoy or take in this totally inconsequential fact of my “perfect bifurcation”, the beige concrete with grey aggregate has become grey concrete without discernible aggregate, and I have wandered somewhat to the right, off the brickwork.)
The two backpacks I carry, meanwhile, lay unevenly upon me: one because it is evenly upon me, while its contents are arranged unevenly; the other because it is unevenly upon me, and because its contents are as well, so that it is doubly unwieldy, and the arrangement, as a whole, is triply unwieldy or cumbersome. There is the sharp point of a box in my back.
As an attractive person enters the right front quadrant of what I consider my “range”, an ever expanding and contracting field of view and, more generally, of sense (whose rule for expansion-contraction I must someday discover the equation for) I find I don’t think about that in the way I once did — as a possibility, a door, a hope. It has now more the feeling of a kind of collapse. It is rather as if, at the moment the attractive person appears in my range of view, reality too has become somewhat unevenly distributed: or as if, where the attractive person is, a foundation of reality has been removed, causing a collapse, a collapse of attention perhaps, toward that corner where the person is. In a word, the house of myself has lost its support in that place where the attractive person is so that now all of myself comes rushing toward that person as if looking, rather sadly, to that same person for support.
(In this instance, though I feel the chipping away of my foundation, though the house of myself I have felt slide off the hill of myself in that direction, I am able to prevent myself from visibly betraying anything of this crumbling of self. As one thought lurches down the other is thrust up: so that I am rather wondering something only tangentially related: if the appearance of my backpack is as irregular as the discomfort felt by it is sharp –does it look as bad as feels– that is where my thoughts now mainly are.)
The brickwork to my side has meanwhile become unevenly disturbed by a tree and its roots, and I think to myself that, lover of time worn things that I am, or that I proclaim myself to be, it is utterly out of keeping with the fashion of this place to have anything the least bit time worn or disordered. The aesthetic of this place, its only charm, is that it’s brand new, which it no longer quite is. As changeable and update-able as a website, is this place, its seems to say. (It’s origins are digital and it is unhappy with itself for not being equally elastic. Made unhappy here by its own tree.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 