Mom is by the one car with the child in her arms and a child is beside her standing and a bentover grandmother-mother-in-law stands beside that child, and mom has told the husband and father that the keys are in her bag and the father-husband has replied to her that he for some reason put her bag in the other car, which car he opens and retrieves the bag from

and now as the woman receives the bag, her face flushed from the heat and from the family event she’s trying to manage, she says something which I can’t recall, and the man is laughing (and I realize something has happened to the man) and he says “there is a hole there” — his foot has landed in an unseen hole of the grassy median by the car they now have the keys to. He has already taken his foot from the hole and there was no injury or anything else, that was it. That was the story..

By age Fifty, Summs would come to say, he had grown sick of the mere magic tricks and parlor games associated with his mystic practice. He had made himself grow three inches, but had lost them again within the week. He had written two different personal letters in two separate corners of the world, and posted them to his guru in Russia, using only his mind, but the syntax had been childish and the handwriting sloppy (as his guru later informed him, first through an email then through a dream). Games! Summs thought, who expected far more. For what other goal could there be in attaining enlightenment than immortality itself or at least an unnaturally long life span? Or at the very least, a sense that life was not just — this.

Then he had heard through a friend of what was known as The Exercise, which was also known as The Position. Once you got into The Position, your pain increased and Time decreased until at a certain point Time actually stopped. Then, if you continued to hold it, Time actually became detached from you, you became “unlatched from its locomotive,” and you could move forward or back in it just like you could in space. You were no longer moving in the two directions the track allowed, but 360 — and who knew? maybe even up and down!

Summs had never gotten that far with it (though he knew people who had) but one time while practicing he found himself levitating, which was one of its better known side effects and indicated you were getting close. Button by button Time’s “straightjacket” was becoming unlatched. However, the downside was that The Position really was quite painful and Time could really seem quite excruciatingly slow before it became completely stopped.

Now there was a sudden knocking at the door. “I’m in The Position!” he cried back. The knocking became more pronounced, “please GO AWAY!” he said still more forcefully. Then he found himself levitating toward the door and unlatching it with a quick back and forth motion of his head, though he was so annoyed by his visitor he didn’t even realize his feet weren’t touching the ground. Opening the door, a package lay at his feet — what! It was his latest round of dietary supplements! His anger completely melted away in the presence of his latest delivery. Well that was quick! What amazing times we lived in, after all! Summs was indeed so awestruck with the conveniences of modern life that it sometimes seemed that, through the miracle of technology, Society itself was attaining the enlightenment that had so far escaped so many of its individuals. Maybe all we had to do, in the end, thought Summs, is lean back, relax and responsibly enjoy human progress. Enough of these games, indeed!

o you a
u C ke
h .e i
a S l
v T ml
i e O he r
ama nt r t mae
Fma o R t mag
Fmaos v wrh maos ê
a rmaos er o c rmaos n
ermados co r oa rmados a
n rmados m s r rmados n
U armados ey hip armados t
ar mad os armados The Se e’rTouriiprThe See’rT he See’rThe See’r
…a””; “”; “”; f q a “”; “”;pC B
.d””; “”; “”; e u u “”; “”;bse
…e””; “”; “”; a a o; “”; “”Nol
λl; “”; “”;rss Y “”; “”rie
..άθ””; “”; “”; “”; “”;mς
..ε””; “”; “”; “”.σα
;. βιώ ;

When I have trouble understanding something the best solution is generally to turn my head in another direction, which has the effect of internally reorienting my ideas. Reconfigured thus, they will sometimes snap in place and result in my understanding of the issue.

Similarly, if I’ve made a bad decision, I ask myself, how was my head facing at the time? in what direction was it turned? Was it sideways facing the wall while I was in bed? Was it squeezed between my hands looking down at the edge of the desk? Once I’ve determined this, I resolve never again to have my head facing in that same direction while making a decision of a similar type.

It’s an interesting question, but I’ve never gone so far as to outright “ban” a position of my head or neck, even though I may have identified it as a stubborn producer of incomplete or erroneous thoughts. It would, further, be an interesting project to design and build the sort of headgear that might be used to enforce such a ban. But in fact I find that each sort of mental problem has it own right and wrong head-orientations associated with it; what works for one problem will not work with another, and so the best strategy often remains to shift one’s head as often as possible, until finally you “wriggle” your ideas to the best position.

This is just to say, that if you should see me zigzagging and leaping around with mouth agape as if attempting to swallow raindrops, or if you see me thrusting my head between my legs and performing an extravagant dance, do not be amazed, this is simply me when I’m deep in thought, as some of my ideas can be quite irregularly shaped!

…………

o you a …………o you a…………o you a
u …… ke …………u …… ke…………u …… ke
h …… i …………h …… i…………h …… i
a …… l …………a …… l…………a …… l
v …… ml …………v …… ml…………v …… ml

e …… he …………e …… he…………e …… he
nt …… t …………nt …… t…………nt …… t
o …… t …………o …… t…………o …… t
v …… h …………v …… h…………v …… h
er …… c …………er …… c…………er …… c
co …… oa …………co …… oa…………co …… oa
m …… r …………m …… r…………m …… r
ey …… p …………ey …… p…………ey …… p
our …… p …………our …… p…………our …… p
f …… a …………f …… a…………f …… a
e …… u …………e …… u…………e …… u
a …… o …………a …… o…………a …… o
rs …… Y …………rs …… Y…………rs …… Y
.v v iR v v………….v v iR v v………….v v iR v v

.
/ \
0…….o
L..nuit blanche[
dit blanchenuit blanche3
)nuit blanchenuit blanche +
nheenuit blanche nui …A. a In
u……………….,,,…....v v ………iRn
inuit blanche nuit ble a ……..v aVvn
tnuit blanchenuithl……………,,,,,a in
blanchenablanch a…………,,,. A R In
lchenuit blae n e. c …………..v an
. alanchenuim…. h ………..,,,,,.i rn
…….nchenuit blan n e..……….vair..n
.c………………..,,,…..r……. pn
. hnuit blanche nuitdan
z – ————————-bs
g…………………………………….G
G……………………………………..G
e……………………………………..z
~…………………………………….!
(………………………………. *
Icommination y
n……………. e
d…………… l
e………….. l
f…………. e
e……….. h
n……… s
s…….. t
e…… e
o…. i
f… r
h. r
a

Managed to get this thought written down while I was stopped at the Glebe light: That I hadn’t been “oggling” the gal I’d seen running down the hill but “admiring her youthful gait.” (A true statement, incidentally.)

It was a fairly short note and that is a fairly long light: about 35 words some of them abbreviated, pencil to paper, in I want to say is two minutes.

How much time vanishes as you try to make even a single thought clear. To edit something too. This is where time goes.

First idea: the “sock in the drier idea.” Our minds are like spinning laundry, always turning, and which we’re always watching, and once in a while a sock or something sticks in the window and hangs there for what seems like an unnaturally long time — and that is a “random thought.”

Second idea: What seems like random thoughts are not actually random at all. A stimulus produces thought A, which results in thought B, which results in thoughts C and D, etc., but it all happens so fast we’re unaware of the logical chain. To us, the physical stimulus seems directly to result in thought D — and that relationship seems to us totally random.

Third idea is that they are mistakes. I just hit the garbage disposal switch instead of the light switch; perhaps the brain opens up the pathways to certain memories when it intended to open up certain others.

Customer recommended Hitchcock’s “Lodger.” Same customer was asked what her tolerance was for Samuel Beckett-like productions. Said High, said “not tolerance, enthusiasm”

Customer was not a numismatist but did work closely with one.

Customer wasn’t there — was with family on vacation in Mexico

Customer unable to get appointment to give blood for over a month — they were currently working through huge backlog.

Customer said she had tried out for Jeopardy! but gone 9 out of ten on a screening exam for which one needed a ten out of ten. (Asked on the spot the name of the Greek or Roman blacksmith of the gods, she gave Thor, maybe thinking of the hammer. Asked the number of plays written by Shakespeare, she gave 33, which was close to the figure I had in mind).

Customer’s sister had suddenly passed away, mid-thirties. Still awaiting results of medical examiner.

Out the window: deep red baseball hat and similarly colored muscle shirt from which bronze shapely arms emerged. Girlfriend in short cutoffs scant inches from his side.

“Only the godlike believe in the gods” (Holderlin)

Whole right side of customer’s face collapsed to that nostril’s side when she sniffed.

Customer, looking at the display for gift certificates, thought the store must have been around since the 1860’s or something, it looked so old. “This place must have been around since the 19th century,” she thought to herself on seeing the store’s gift certificate display.

Customer from Waterford. She was going back out there to get a headboard her brother had made for her, which would take a UHAUL to bring back. Waterford was a small rural town — a neighbor had used cows for his kids’ 529 — but had been built up in recent years so it was now twenty minutes for groceries not thirty.

If you were to restrict your inquiry to Western literature, from say Homer to Joyce, what would be the evidence that humankind had (positively, negatively, lateraly) changed?

(Question occurs to me because I was thinking of the idea of “not living a real life” as being a question of more recent literature, not to be found in ancient or even renaissance sources.)

Somewhat related, in Homer’s eyes, how strange would Crime and Punishment have been? Would he have said it was nonsense, would he have said it was a great advance on his own art?