Where we are, so far, in the story

Mitoki is a painter or he is not. He likes to squeeze the tubes and look at the color. He has no sense of composition or line. He is trying to paint a bird but he does not know why he wants to paint a bird and so the question becomes as important as the painting. There is a narrator who tells us this but at this point in the story we do not know who he is or if he is reliable. The narrator who is telling the story of Mitoki is not the narrator of the paragraph you are reading so for now there are two narrators and we do not know who they are. “Who are they?” we ask ourselves. “We do not know yet,” we answer. There is an author of the story of the narration of the narration of the story of Mitoki, and of the little stories inside the story of Mitoki, and of the characters that Mitoki encounters—and also the sub-plots including the characters that Mitoki does not encounter, or at least not directly, as far as we can tell, at this point in the story, though I can assure you there will be some robots and at least two talking bunnies that may or may not affect his trajectory—and the author has made statements, which I will relate to you presently, as they have some not insignificant impact on the framing of the project that includes the stories and the meta-stories and the micro-stories as well as the paintings (which are watercolors, and need to be understood in that context (e.g. the materials (which are used incorrectly, especially concerning the proper ratio of water to paint), the formal rules of painting (which are often subverted, such as the leaving of the white paper as the white and not mucking up the white part with the white paint like one might if working in other media (see: oil paint)), and the fact that all this is happening on paper—albeit fancy paper from France—so we can just say “paper” and not have to say “canvas” as we are accustomed when discussing painting)) and thus may shed some light on the work at hand. Here is one statement the author has previously made which is central to our understanding of the project at this point, an early point, in the story: “I will paint a picture and write a paragraph every week and post them on my blog every Tuesday.” Obviously, he was not able to produce intelligent work weekly, but despite his lack of success regarding deadlines the rest of his statement, the implied content, suggests that the author is simply and completely mucking around in language and image for his own pleasure, and herein lies the essence of the overlapping concerns of the author, the narrators (there may be more than two), and Mitoki himself: If I am, we are, just mucking around, then where is the story coming from? That is a question. Thusly, I begin to turn towards the next narrator, who will take you a good ways along the path that we have all just now begun. First, let me remind you (or inform you, if you will, if you believe that I have not made this point strongly enough already) that the story develops in paragraphs, weekly, with pictures (that may or may not be related to the paragraphs, depending mostly on the author’s whimsy) which renders the whole catastrophe episodic in both nature and function, but I have complied for you, here, now, on behalf of the author and for the sake of convenience, the first two years of paragraphs and paintings all in a row, which is not so much a contradiction in intent as a means to an end, the end being a clear and economical recapitulation of major plot events and minor pleasures for those readers who have not followed the story regularly. Secondly, I remind you (or inform you, etcetera) that at this point in the story, the just-before-the-beginning, the narrator of the story is still as yet unnamed. You may, however, refer to me, not incorrectly, as Lucien Frost, which is a premise you should put you attention to, as we are likely to meet again, however unsoon that might be. “How is it that Lucien Frost knows so much about these things?” you may be asking yourself. I shall not answer. I will, however, add this technical note: these recapitulated posts, posted all of them here in a row, proceed forward in time, so that scrolling down propels one into the middle, from here, the beginning, but future posts, due to Blogger formatting, will accumulate backwards, so that the newest episode will load on top of the previous, pushing our history behind and below us. A slippery and essential thing, both in content and in practice, time is.


The ProblemThe problem (if there was one) was not a problem of quantity, or structure, or change, or space. It was not a problem of figures, or of numbers, or even a problem of scale. It did not concern computation, denotation, figuration, lineation, divination, compression, ethics, poetics, devotion, luck, skill, intent, diligence, morality, philosophy, cartography, or even axiomatically defined abstract systems. Certainly it would come to that, eventually, but the problem, for now, here, at the beginning, the problem (if there was one, if there even was a problem) was quite simply a problem with the question. He wants to paint a bird, needs to, and the problem is why. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how because hows are easy, series or sequence, one foot after the other, but existentially why bother, what does it solve? Be the tree. Solve for bird. What does this mean, could it possibly mean? It’s a problem of clarity. It’s a problem of precision. It’s a problem of faith and doubt and just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished anything. Maybe if it was pretty it would be something. Maybe if it was beautiful it would be true. But it’s not; not beautiful, not even realistic, it’s sorta cartoonish: more like a man in a birdsuit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, another lie against an unreal sky of Cadmium, because he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible, unless his heart is a metaphor, unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the page is like looking out the window at a bird in your chest with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear but you paint anyway because the hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not and the hand wants to do something useful. Answer: be the tree. Answer: solve for bird. Render, render. Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart says the heart. Answer: be the heart. Answer: be the hand. Answer: be the bird. Answer: be the sky.


UnfinishableUnfinishable. And a piece of crap as well, he thinks. This isn’t going anywhere, isn’t going to, but he keeps his paints wet and sits there for a while. Sometimes you have to lace up your boots and put on your manface. Othertimes, you quit while you’re ahead. So which time is this time? And where is there to go, anyways? The trees suck-which branches are in front of the others?-and the birds are dead from the start: no feet, no eyes. Sure, he could decorate them like a cake, but that wouldn’t make them luminous. Dot dot dot them up with speckles, constellations if you knew the pattern, story, otherwise just plots on a graph. At least the birds are black this time, but the eyes are empty zeroes; there’s nobody home in the body, there’s no one home in the one. Dead moon, empty room. A living eye looks wet. These birds aren’t salient yet. Lord, is there any room inside me with which to contain you?, asks St. Augustine, who’s just sitting around trying to be holy. And sure, who wouldn’t want to be lifted up into the revolutionary kingdom? But no one’s getting there on these birds wings. Getting there. A boy on a train. A boy in a suit on a train. A man in the wicker basket of a balloon. Can we get here first, before we leave? Can we poke a dot on the map that signifies we’re here, bull’s-eye, one instead of zero? Can we make the place? Please evaluate. Please advise.


Contrast and likenessContrast and likeness, the difference between one bird and many, the similarity between one wolf, one sheep, one meadow. Uniqueness. Let worm equal worm. Let worm not equal not-worm. We could build a system, figure it out. There is, you realize, no shortage of open problems. And maybe there’s a more advanced way of thinking about it. Bird or not-bird? Greater than or less than might be more precise. Or even percentages: 70% salmon, 30% chicken. It’s supposed to be a grackle but it sorta got away from him, but why not let the colors do what they wanna do, which is blend, which is sorta neighborly if you think about it. Blackbird, he says. So be it. Indexed and normative. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? With watercolors, how do you show your work, your math, a long division, do you carry the one? Carry where? He’s building a system. Math has answers. Art accumulates, sure, and has its interconnections, but math builds in a different way. An artist can create a singular work, a mathematician rarely does. And when he or she does contribute a formula it gets subsumed almost immediately into other, larger applications. Yes, the history of math is the history of people from every culture, every period in time, all assaying the same set of questions. How much? How many? How far? How long? Art doesn’t do this. Or does it? Is there some kind of emotional math that develops? Take this bird, for instance: isolate and solve for n. Get this bird on one side of the wire and make it equal something, a spiritual algebra. Go to sleep and look at your hands in a dream. Let the flavor match the cinematography and open the door. Everything is going to be different now. Go tell management, a bird on every branch.


Mitoki is a boat, a fishMitoki is a boat, a fish, he has a little plate-Peas and cutlets, they’re my favorite!-he’s ten today. Happy birthday. Ten is big. Two numbers instead of one. Well, two numerals. A numeral represents a number, just like a word represents a thing. That’s what Mrs. Sagivakian says and she’s a smart teacher. Not like Mr. Ober who says Did you practice? I don’t think you practiced! as he bangs on the black keys, minor chord, trouble trouble. Charlie doesn’t like Mrs. Sagivakian and Jason doesn’t like math. Charlie says you can’t have a numeral for zero because it isn’t there and Jason says Fuckall under his breath for the whole hour. This is a number line, but imagine a worm, says Mrs. Sagivakian. A worm with segments, and each segment is a number. It looks like a worm now, Mitoki thinks, but how does that help anything? Not all worms have segments and some worms, when cut in half, grow into two worms don’t they? It seems flimsy, this number line that goes on forever in both directions; how can this be the basis of everything? Sometimes, when he takes out the garbage, the paper bags look weak, wet on the bottom, not to be trusted. It feels like that, a creepy lie, a magic that doesn’t work. Like how the wallpaper in the hallway curls up a little, at the bottom. Like if you peeled it back there wouldn’t be anything behind it but an emptiness. Plus, worms wiggle, they flinch and curl. Either the number line is dead or it can move, get moved, like some days are longer than others, like something could be pulling on the worm and stretching it. Today is a long day, good day, cake and ice cream birthday day. Two new shirts and a video game and a 24-color paint set. 24 is more than eight, which is how many colors his old set had, and ten is more than nine. Ten is a lot. Ten is today. Ten is a segment of a worm that never ends in both directions. But that’s wrong. It does end, it ends in worms. A birthday is a rung in the ladder to Heaven, says grandma, but grandma’s creepy. Maybe the ladder falls down and makes a railroad. I will go places, Mitoki thinks. A boy on a train. A boy in a suit on a train on an adventure.


It's him but it isn't himA bedspread with cowboys on it, clean sheets. This is a nice pillow. This is a good mattress. The furnace makes a whooshing noise and warm air flutters through the vents. That is my bookshelf and that is my desk and that is the hook that holds up my coat. This is a nice room, little room, little window, tree outside, goodnight fingernail moon. And then the room gets a little bit brighter. No big deal, it’s just my eyes adjusting. Dilate. Like the lens on a camera. I am a camera. Sorta. Well, what am I really? How many things in this room are me? I am not the lamp on my desk. I am not the hook on the wall or even the coat on the hook. I am not even a cowboy. The room seems cold. The light looks wrong. What in this room has anything to do with me? Mine mine mine mine say it enough times and all you get is an echo. I am an echo. Hello, my name is Mitoki and I don’t know what I am. If I can point at it how can it be me? A little bird, an empty cage. Sometimes telling the truth is impossible, he thinks, Mitoki does, and then he falls asleep. He’s in a canoe, rowing through the sky, up over the six-story rooftops. It’s him but it isn’t him, not a him he’d claim as him, not a him he’d even consider possible. A zillion eyes and scores of teeth, out of focus or double exposed, an echo, wispy. It feels good, floaty-soft. He wakes up thirsty, sits up in bed, he’s going to get a glass of water but there’s a man outside the window with a box under his arm. There’s not enough moon to see him clearly. He walks across the yard and jumps over the garden wall, but not the way a person would jump over a wall. This is just a dream, thinks Mitoki, as he crawls back under the covers.


Most things happen somewhere elseMost things happen somewhere else. And somewhen. Sure there’s here and now, but it’s small, comparatively. The sun’s not up yet, 7:10am, Building Two, Second Floor, Corner Room, Geometry. The chalk moans on the boards as we write out our proofs. If two angles form a linear pair, then they are supplementary. It’s not quite difficult and not quite exciting. Nothing moves. Things move in calculus, in physics, but geometry just sits there, unlike the movies. A point is an exact location. A line is a distance between. A plane is like a table top. Space is the set of all points. Time is what happens when you shake it all around. I can see in three dimensions but not in four. Why? What makes a moment? How long is now? There were bullies smoking cigarettes behind Building One this morning, like usual. Where are they now? I can remember them but I can’t see them. What would we look like in four dimensions? Caterpillar, blurry centipede, a thousand thousand arms and legs in one long smear across the landscape: my tail in bed, then bathroom, kitchen, walk to the bus, the bus, getting off the bus, ducking into the library to be left alone, then up the stairs and into here, this moment, trying not to make the chalk squeak on the board? I am a dot, single thing, absolute location. I am not the space between two points. Can I prove this? And what happens next? If you could see the line, you could also see its end. What is it that travels forward? My body? My awareness? Can I prove this? Can I take this chalk and lay out the bones like some sort of autopsy? There’s a poster of a painting in the library that doesn’t have any people in it-not that it has to, but it looks like it should-it’s just the view of a place and there’s something wrong with the weather, a storm coming or something. It’s creepy and it doesn’t add up. Why that moment? Why that view? It makes me dizzy to look at it but it’s better to sit there and wait than to walk around the back of Building One. So what’s next? Biology, History, Language Arts, Lunch. All this was prepared for me. All this was set in motion long ago. I live in somebody else’s future.


VentriloquismOne is the dummy and one is the voice and then there’s the matter of whose hands are where, which is probably impolite to mention. Like all magic, there’s a cone of attention-framed, a focal theater-and then there’s what you might call the business. One time, at work, I had a supervisor with dyslexia, maybe, or maybe she was just plain stupid. For her, most things were interchangeable, which was great for scheduling but not so great for filling out forms. The Saturday person called out. We needed coverage. I watched her work the phones, find somebody, write down the name. Now sure, sometimes when writing quickly, sloppily, an “o” can look like a “6.” But no, this was a perfect six: beautiful belly, arched back. Y6landa, Saturday, 10am. That’s what she wrote. I work the Friday Overnight, which meant that I’d be relieved in the morning by Why-Six-Landa, the robot. You’re thinking maybe I’m the stupid one, and maybe you’re right, but regular-style people don’t have numbers in their names and everyone knows that robots do. I’d never worked with a robot before, so I was kinda excited, planned on staying late, just to watch her work her robot magic. Would she have buttons? Flashing lights? Would she be fully articulated? My neighbor has an artificial knee, which moves in three directions, which makes her a cyborg, but robots... well, robots are a whole bunch cooler. When a ventriloquist throws his voice, he’s not really throwing anything, he’s talking through his teeth. But when a ventriloquist builds a robot, he’s throwing everything he’s got: he can even fall asleep and the robot will still run program. A singer has to show up for the piece to work. A songwriter doesn’t. Execute Song. Run Program. I’ll be over here, on the couch. I’m only closing my eyes. The shift goes by faster when you forget yourself and just run program. You still have to show up, though, if you want to get paid. I’m not sure why everyone assumes the smaller one’s the dummy, it could go either way. And which one should you watch out for? Which one’s more dangerous? The empty one waiting to be filled or the sad-eyed dope spilling out from everywhere like a leaky box? Y6landa showed up at ten, on-time and not a robot, just another regular-style person clocking some hours. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed.


He dreams a center cityHe dreams a center city in shimmer and chrome. Lots of people are willing to take off their clothes. Open your heart then. Surrender makes a face beautiful. Watch my face, you have a gift, and again everyone is in their costumes. The floating head is where you put your head at, preposition preposition preposition, and the appraiser has to measure the inside. You trade one for the other: your wife for a critic, your buddy for a different buddy, and the head floats out of the room, makes a pledge, a mark on the ledger, sings his sad song and lets the blue tune go. Is the glass half empty? There is no glass, there’s only water, and the floating head moves out over the towns to sea, big balloon, big crybaby. The water’s not blue, and the sky isn’t, just the song, blue song, sad in the trashcan, leave it. Take the content out of painting and you still have painting. Take the painting out of painting and a table gets overthrown. Sometimes I draw you with fangs. Somedays I make more sense than others. Is this your sadness? asks the trashman. No, that is a fishbone and that is a soup can and that over there is no longer recognizable. You can disconnect it or you can try to pull it all together. He could glue it all together. I could. Who’s speaking anyway? Not really a problem, thinks the floating head, since y’all look the same from up here. Or he could pull it apart, spend his whole life pulling it all apart and have no time left to do anything smart with the pieces. Separate the sad from the song, the song from the bird, the voice from the throat, the soul from the body. Is it death? Heaven? Dangerous? Imagination, the scene from above, or simply self-awareness? More often than not, your scope is larger than you realize, which only makes you that much more responsible. The wrong things have been wired together, he thinks. Things that shouldn’t even touch, it shorts out the system, electrical fire, blown bulb. There is no room in my heart for you because my heart is full of blood. Sometimes a metaphor is just a lie, like advice is just another way of proving yourself right. Take these pills, says Dr. Jones. Ditch your friends, and exercise, and put your sad in the trashcan. Yeah, whatever. May you have a long life, says Dr. Jones. He says it as a curse.


Mitoki keeps his paints wetMitoki keeps his paints wet. Practices, practices. I will leave a little bit on the page with every mark, of myself. I was here, doing and feeling. I was here for a while before I stopped being here anymore. A trail, a trace. I meet the page, sometimes afraid, sometimes with grace, but I show up. This one’s not a bird and not a man, not a dream in a boat or a worm in a field of lollipops. Is it blasphemy that he grows roots instead of wings? Cash on the barrelhead, food on the plate, lipstick on the mirror, hand on the shoulder, chest, the small of the back: he’s trying to find the channel, flow and counterflow, silk road, red telephone, by smudging up the pages, sheet by sheet, leaves on an invisible tree. Let this leave me so something else can land. Let me grow a magic branch for something else to land. The hours advance, the light has shifted. Why does he stay? Roots don’t quit when they hit a rock, they do not have a choice, they strive, they go around. I am like this, ordinary every day, taking the pictures out of my head. There is no way to see the future. Did he make a contribution? Was he happy, right, or kind? The work is sufficient or it is not. We could take these pictures and screw his name on the brass plates into the frames, or we could walk the avenues saying Look, these trees were planted after the war. It is hope, it is greenery, it is a lovely view. Card table, pencil, paint tube, page. And the invisible tree reappears.


Meanwhile, further down the timeline...“All engines, helmsmen! Full speed to Empire Seven!” shouts Fury Boy Number One over the metallic buzz that floods the bridge. The robobots wrestle with the knobs and levers and the evening gets one notch creamier, pinprick stars swelling suddenly to the size of bathtubs, caroming past the windows on every side.
       “Empire Seven,” whispers Fury Boy Number One to the flashing buttons, fluorescent tears sizzling down his face. “Onward, to Empire Seven.”

       *

Below the bridge, on subdeck 23, a pear-shaped man is placing waxed paper and cherry blossoms in between the pages of a large encyclopedia.
       “Pressed flowers are stupid,” says the robobot.
       “You’re stupid,” says the pear-shaped man, off-handedly, not really looking up from an entry about wolves.
       “I think pressed flowers are stupid,” says the robobot, now brandishing his flashgun.
       “Yes, I know you do,” says the pear-shaped man, still not looking up.
       “Let’s go to the President’s Club and watch the stars go zooming by. We could get sandwiches. We could hold our breath and stand very still,” says a wobot, from under the table.
       “You don’t breathe,” says the robobot.
       “I’m being metaphorical, and I’m not talking to you,” says the wobot.
       “I’m not hungry,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Pressed flowers are really stupid,” says the robobot.

       *

“But the maps are all wrong,” says Fury Boy Twenty-Five, pointing at the black, irregular shapes on the translucent pages splayed across the table top.
       “They’re not wrong, they’re just incomplete,” says Fury Boy Twenty-Six. “That’s why we have the wobots.” Outside the oval windows of the Map Room, the stars keep streaming by. “And anyway, it’s too late.”

       *

In the President’s Club, at a backroom table, a small group of wobots flash each other furtive glances and wring their hands, the secret mission still glistening inside their wires.
       “We’re agreed then,” says one of the wobots.
       “No way around it, far as I can see,” says another.
       “Well then,” says a third, laying his aluminum hand on the table top, to be covered by other aluminum hands.
       “Swarm,” they say, quietly.


Dear MaDear Ma, I’m having trouble giving up my sad. It’s not that I think it’s worth anything, and I’m not being difficult, but sometimes I just feel low. Maybe I’m not cut out for space travel. Sure, we have worobobots (we call them wobots, for short) but they don’t seem to be working. At least not for me, cause every other Fury Boy seems fine. (Does it seem weird to you that robots build robots that build other robots? Robot, robobot, robobobot... where does it stop?) I know I can be a Gloomy Gus, but Fury Boys aren’t supposed to feel bad. Or doubt things. Yes, I know, these are forbidden words now, but I’ve been looking over the maps and equations and there sure is a lot we don’t know. Sometimes I get a glimmery feeling, a tip of the tongue feeling. I don’t know how to say it really, it’s just that there are some questions that no one’s asking. And yes, I remember all the trouble I caused last time-that’s why I’m here now, isn’t it?-but I’ve been thinking that there’s maybe perhaps a different answer than the one we’ve been looking at. Like what if there’s a number between one and two. A whole number. A hidden number. Or a number between one and zero, a number really close to zero that isn’t zero. I look at the blank places on the maps and I get this feeling that there’s a glitch in the math or there’s a glitch in the way we are thinking about the math. Glimmery, tip of the tongue, like I said. Either way, I feel like I am close to finding it. Oh Ma, you should see these wobots, they’re hilarious! And you thought I was bad! They mope around the Gloaming, wringing their hands and mumbling I am woe. Woe is me. Sometimes they even hide under the tables quoting poetry. It’s spooky. I kinda feel sorry for them, having to carry around everyone else’s sadness, but we do have to get stuff done. Anyway, I know you hate these recordings so I’ll try to wind this up. We should be reaching the threshold soon and I’ll not be able to transmit again until we get to Empire Seven. The rooms are small and the meals are hot and I miss you. Say hello to Pa and please take care of Wicked Lester for me. I’ll be home eventually.

Love,
Your son, Max


Where is Fury Boy Number Nine?“Where is Fury Boy Number Nine?” shouts Fury Boy Number One at the assembled faces before him.
       “Really, you don’t have to shout like that,” says a gloomy voice from underneath the War Room table.
       “He isn’t in his quarters,” says Fury Boy Number Seven.
       “And he isn’t at his desk in the Map Room,” says Fury Boy Number Twelve.
       “There is no Fury Boy Number Nine,” says the underneath the table voice.
       “Of course there’s a Fury Boy Number Nine!” yells Fury Boy Number One.
       “Alleged,” says the voice from beneath the table.
       “What in tarnation are you talking about?” shrieks FB-1.
       “Sir, you have a little bit of spit on your lip, right there,” says FB-6.
       “This is Insubordination! This is Treason! I don’t need this kind of shit from a tabletop!” howls FB-1.
       “Sir,” says FB-5 “It’s not a tabletop, it’s a wobot. You know how they can get.”
       “I don’t talk to screamers,” says the wobot, almost to himself, in a gloomy and somewhat fatalistic voice. He has begun to wring his hands, which, in turn, has begun to produce an ugly and melancholy sound, like cars crashing into each other, over and over again, in slow motion.
       “What’s that sound?” asks FB-1, almost quietly now, because he’s startled by its painful intensity.
       “I think you’ve upset him,” says FB-4.
       “I don’t talk to screamers and I don’t talk to hitters. I don’t have to and you can’t make me, you lousy bully. I don’t think I like you anymore, Mr. Everyone-Do-What-I-Say.”
       “Somebody do something,” says FB-1.
       “Shitty shitty shitty shitty, you’re a big shitty mess and you never listen. Never never never never,” says the wobot, as the car crash sound continues to grow louder and louder, filling the War Room with a certain sense of accidental and tragically unavoidable doom.
       “No one meant to hurt your feelings,” says FB-4, trying to be nice but sounding fake.
       “Shitty shitty shitty shitty...” repeats the voice from underneath the table.
       “We were talking about Fury Boy Number Nine,” says FB-3.
       “ALLEGED Fury Boy Number Nine,” says the wobot, sullenly.
       “Can’t you get him to stop making that noise?” asks FB-8.
       “What do you mean by Alleged? And could you stop doing that with your hands?” asks FB-3.
       “Say the magic word,” says the wobot.
       “I don’t know any magic words,” says FB-3.
       “The magic word is please, and his name is Max, and he’s not a Fury Boy,” says the wobot.
       “Please stop making that noise,” says FB-3.
       “Okay,” says the wobot, putting his hands at his sides.
       “Now, what makes you think that Max is not a Fury Boy?” asks FB-3, as politely as he can.
       “Because he won’t give up his sad,” says the wobot.
       “Then we’ll never make it past the threshold!” exclaims FB-1.
       “We don’t know that for sure,” says FB-6.
       “Actually, we do,” says FB-4.
       “I thought the whole reason we kept you wobot around was to hold onto our sad for us!” hollers FB-1.
       “He’s yelling again,” says the wobot, wringing his hands again.
       “He’s making that sound again!” yells FB-1.
       “Why don’t you have his sad? What happened?” asks FB-3.
       “We’re not sure, exactly. We tried, but it just didn’t stick,” says the wobot.
       “Find Fury Boy Number Nine and bring him to me!” barks FB-1.
       “Alleged Fury Boy,” says FB-5.
       “FIND HIM AND BRING HIM TO ME NOW!” roars FB-1, over the thundering car crash sound.
       “Shitty little bully,” mumbles the wobot from underneath the table, wringing his hands.


Cucumber sandwiches are stupid“Cucumber sandwiches are stupid,” says the robobot, looking at the food spread out across the table.
       “You’re stupid,” says the pear-shaped man, casually, trying not to let the comment interrupt the conversation with his guest.
       “I’m sorry,” he says, “You were saying?”
       “Well,” says Max, “I think they’re looking for me.”
       “Of course they’re looking for you,” says a voice from underneath the tablecloth.
       “He’s not talking to you,” says the robobot, aiming his flashgun at the pitcher of lemonade, at the tray of sandwiches, at the bowl of potato salad, just sort of guesstimating at where the wobot is, exactly, underneath the table.
       “He’s not talking to you, either,” says the wobot, darting between everyone’s legs, trying to land a really good kick on the robobot.
       “Gentlemen, please! We have company!” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Are they always like this?” asks Max.
       “Unfortunately,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “He can’t help it,” the bots say, pointing at each other.
       “So how do you know they’re looking for me?” asks Max.
       “Everyone knows,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Just look at you,” says the robobot.
       “It’s not my fault,” says the wobot.
       “What do you mean, just look at me?” asks Max.
       “Here, have a sandwich,” says the robobot, holding a sandwich in front of his face.
       “Anyway, they won’t find you here,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Right, they won’t find you here,” says the robobot.
       “Because of the snow,” says the wobot.
       “Right, because of the snow,” says the robobot.
       “They’ll keep running through the rooms and halls but they won’t find you,” says the wobot.
       “At least for a while,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Because of the snow,” says the wobot.
       “Yes, because of the snow,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “I don’t understand what any of you are talking about,” Max says, looking at the sandwich in front of his face.
       “Well, maybe we should back up a little bit, then,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Let me tell it! Let me tell it!” pleads the robobot, wiggling around and just sort of jumping up and down a little bit.
       “You won’t tell the right story, you’ll mess it up,” says the wobot.
       “There was once a dark-haired man who had no eyes and no ears,” begins the robobot. “He also had no hair, so he was called dark-haired only in a manner of speaking. He wasn’t able to talk, because he didn’t have a mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have any arms or legs. He also didn’t have a stomach, and he didn’t have a back, and he didn’t have a spine, and he also didn’t have any other insides. He didn’t have anything.”
       “That part comes later, you’re getting it all backwards!” says the wobot.
       “Stop it! Stop it! Please!” Max yells. “You tell me that everyone on the ship is looking me for me and I don’t know why, I don’t know what I did wrong, and I was smuggled in here like traitor by a couple of robots and I’m freaked out, alright? I don’t know what’s going on.”
       “Perhaps I should tell you the story,” says the pear-shaped man.


Snow


Whaddya lookin' at?       “Whaddya lookin’ at?”
       “Comic book.”
       “Any good?”
       “Sorta. I like the pictures.”
       “You like the pictures because they’re flat.”
       “Yes, Bartlett, I like flat.”
       “Art is a window, Mitoki. It should open up on something.”
       “Stained glass windows don’t.”
       “You gonna eat that bacon?”
       “Art happens all at once.”
       “Painting does. You gonna eat it?”
       “There’s no time in painting, so there’s no distance.”
       “Big deal.”
       “It is a big deal. You have to compromise. You have to simulate the time and distance.”
       “ . . . ”
       “This guy here, the captain of the spaceship, you know he’s the captain because of the knobs and dials behind his head. They’re proximate. They’re juxtaposed.”
       “Is it about birds?”
       “Why would it be about birds? They’re in space. There’s no air in space.”
       “Then how do they sing?”
       “How does who sing?”
       “The angels.”
       “They’re not angels, they’re spacemen. You’re not listening.”
       “I’m glad you’re done with the birds, Mitoki.”
       “I’m not done with the birds.”
       “You could paint other animals.”
       “I used to paint fish.”
       “You could paint a land animal.”
       “Birds are vessels.”
       “You could paint a monkey and give it to somebody.”
       “Give it to who?”
       “Birds are not vessels. Urns are vessels. Spaceships are vessels.”
       “Birds are vessels for the lyric moment.”
       “Maybe monkeys are vessels for the comic moment.”
       “ . . . ”
       ““I’m eating the bacon.”
       “You can’t just put a frame around anything, Bartlett.”
       “Sure you can.”
       “You need more than just a frame, you need imagination.”
       “And aptitude and technique and a lot of other things.”
       “Are you trying to tell me something?”
       “Yes. Stop painting birds.”
       “ . . . ”
       “I’m saying it as a friend.”


Bobby's MonkeyPaint a monkey for a friend and make the sky a fuzzy red. Monkey has eyes like wedding rings. Watch over him, monkey. Bobby has skin the color of glue, his hair sloppy. He drives the car, he has a discovery. Most aren’t that lucky. There’s a lot to be said for the right brown jacket and slumming through the basement of the museum, those marble heads like candies. Bobby likes his art serious and I can’t paint like that. I’ve sent chocolates, made proclamations. I’ve stolen things and driven across the countryside. There are many kinds of love, yes. There are many kinds. Bobby of muscle, Bobby of varnish, Bobby of twilight, Bobby of caramel. I would paint him in olive and gold, give him a piano and a room to drag it through, smoke rings and French onion soup but I’m not painting his picture, I’m painting him a monkey for a wall in the set of rooms he paces through. Sometimes your inner life is a sheet of black glass and a small white pill. Bobby of wanting and Bobby of getting, Bobby of sleeping and Bobby of waking. There’s a man in the monkey’s head in the original. I painted it from a picture of a monkey suit. There was a parade. It might have been raining. I am not a serious artist, but I feel things, like kindness, occasionally, and I worry about you. There will be a time in the future when the picture is on the wall and the light will be fading and the the blocks of light from the windows will slide across the monkey and it will look like he’s in jail, back in a cage, but it passes Bobby, and you are not trapped, you are not alone, because I have painted a monkey, for the fabulous hall outside your room, and he will watch over you and remind you that someone liked you enough to paint you a monkey, Bobby. Even when your skull feels like a toilet bowl, even when the blocks of light are gone, even when the light is gone, Bobby, and you can’t see the monkey, there will still be a painting of a monkey in the hallway, smiling in the dark. Monkey of darkness, monkey of witness, monkey of kindness, monkey of love. There are many kinds of love, Bobby, and this is one of them.


There's a man inside the monkey's headThere’s a man in the monkey’s head in the original. I painted it from a picture of a monkey suit. There was a parade. It might have been raining. The more I enlarged the mouth, the more the dude went blurry. He looks French, or drunk, which is hard to paint, has few legible features except for a little mustache. So, instead of what was there-which I ignored the first time-I painted in the likeness of the actor Enrique Murciano, who plays a cop on TV on Thursdays. In all actuality, the face looks more like Matthew Fox, who plays a doctor on TV on Wednesdays. Or, if you insist, it doesn’t look like a dude at all. It looks glued-in, not-round, like one of those drama masks, Comedy and Tragedy, a forgery, which he might as well be. An example, a lesson. A mask inside a costume. And which mask is which? Which one is man at his best? His worst? How do you talk about the inside-your inside, anyone’s-how do you say it in words, let alone in painting, which is flat? How do you find the center, internal world, which might only be an algorithm, a set of procedures, inclinations? What if my innermost me is just a buncha math? Run Program. Notice craving (arrow) vocalize hunger (arrow) procure cake (arrow) ingest. Why is cake my favorite? Because personality. Because software. Because there’s an invention in my head that I call myself and he’s in jail, locked in a cage of monkey teeth. Television, Actor, Monkey Suit, Painting. It’s not that you can’t put a frame around everything, it’s that there’s frames around everything already always. It’s masks, all the way down. And notice the monkey’s teeth. They’re different now. A continuity problem, if it was a cop show. Faulty memory, if I was testifying on a cop show. But it’s not a cop show, it’s a house inside a house, a painting, double vessel, two different versions of the same lie, a test of the elasticity of the social construct. Once you recognize your source code, can you read it? Once you read it can you change it? Can you mess with the Chain of Command? Can you dot dot dot questionmark.


ContaminationIt had been there all along, for everyone, underneath everything, because the telephones ring for everyone always--black telephone, red telephone, white courtesy telephone--they ring and ring and anyone could grab the handset and hear the whisper in the wires, so it’s no surprise when he does, and he does, he picks it up, says howdy. It wasn’t like that, of course. It was a door in the hallway, the door there sometimes, not every time, just now and then with no particular pattern that could be discerned by him or anyone, as if he or anyone were really trying to discern, the door in the paper, the door in the floor, so that when he says Now I am going to open the door he would be in the hallway again. It wasn’t like that. And it also wasn’t as if part of the room--his room, every room--was a little bit brighter or darker than it should be, given the placement of the lamps. There were boxes in his head, sure, like there are in every head, and he would move them around, put the smaller boxes inside the larger boxes and pretend like that meant something, like depth, pretend that he could still see the smaller box, a seeing more like dreaming, always thinking of inside and more inside and sometimes outside, a greedy thinking, like it was all, could all, be his, these things. A thing and a thing and a thing and a thing and then, because there were too many things, or for no discernable reason, or for a reason that followed logically from an indiscernible pattern, there was overlap, or contamination, if you care to call it that. There were two things at the same time that made one thing, a multiplicitous thing, a thing you couldn’t be greedy about because there was no single handle to it that you could grab, no box complicated enough to store it in and perhaps, instead of being unique, it was simply the example of a category yet unrecognized or a genus still to be filled in, populated. It was there all along, had been, for him and everyone, but here it was again, for the first time, simultaneously, man and bird concurrent. It could have been any two things, may still be any two things, but it was these as well, and that seemed to change something, everything, the nature of thing, all things, how to see them and where to put them. It wasn’t as if the stacked boxes in his head fell down, it was more like he realized that his hands had been inside each box the whole time.


a onblur="try       “a onblur="try,” says the wobot.
       “deselectConcurrent,” says the robobot.
       “& nbsp! & nbsp! & nbsp! & nbsp!” says the wobot.
       “What?” says Max.
       “It’s the snow,” says the pear-shaped man. “It passes.”
       “There’s no time in painting, so there’s no distance,” says the robobot.
       “& cop show & source code & door in the floor,” says the wobot.
       “Stop saying ‘ampersand,’” says the pear-shaped man.
       “I can’t help it, it’s the snow,” say the wobot.
       “It’s not the snow, yr such a liar, yr just messing around!” says the robobot.
       “Don’t say ‘yr,’” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Shoulda,” says the robobot.
       “Woulda,” says the wobot.
       “Coulda,” says the robobot.
       “Wanna,” says the wobot.
       “Prolly,” says the robobot.
       “SF lkg 4 wbot,” says the wobot.
       “rofl” says the robobot, deadpan.
       “Stop,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “I think your robots are broken,” says Max.
       “No, they’re just nutbars,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “It’s the snow,” says the wobot.
       “What snow?” says Max.
       “The snow job,” says the wobot.
       “The cover story,” says the robobot.
       “Red herring,” says the wobot.
       “Distraction,” says the robobot.
       “It’s a signal jammer,” says the pear-shaped man. “We run tape, transmit a story on top of our conversation. For everyone else, it sounds like too many radio stations, like static, it hides the signal in the sound.”
       “Very cool,” says Max.
       “Yes,” says the pear-shaped man. “But there’s a bit of splashback when we turn it on. The robots feel it most intensely.”
       “It’s true,” says the wobot.
       “He’s not talking to you,” says the robobot.
       “It’s a good tape, it’s a story about a painter,” says the wobot.
       “He’s not talking to you,” says the robobot.
       “Fury Boys don’t like painting. It’s a map they can’t read,” says the wobot.
       “He’s not talking to you,” says the robobot.
       “He’s not talking to you,’ says the robobot,” says the wobot.
       “Don’t go meta-textual on me,” says the robobot.
       “We wobots have a hive mind, Sir” says the wobot. “So we’re allowed to go all meta-textual. Heck, we’re supposed to, we’re the Greek Chorus, after all.”
       “You’re more like vaudeville,” says the pear-shaped man. “And don’t say ‘Heck.’”
       “Meow meow meow,” says the wobot, under his breath.
       “Do you guys have something to tell me or not?” says Max.
       “More than you can even imagine,” says the wobot.
       “Well then, quit stalling and get to the point,” says Max.
       “ . . . ” says the wobot.
       “ . . . ” says the robobot.
       “ . . . ” says the pear-shaped man.
       “I mean, you all wanted to tell me something, right?”
       “You need to learn how to stop and enjoy the moment,” says the robobot.
       “Cause that’s all you get, a moment. Only one at a time,” says the wobot.
       “But I’m in danger,” says Max.
       “And after you’re done being in danger you’ll just be bored again,” says the wobot.
       The pear-shaped man just looks away.
       “It’s true, danger is exciting,” says the robobot.
       “And sadness makes you feel special,” says the wobot.
       “And cigarettes make you look suave,” says the robobot.
       “Especially with a leather jumpsuit,” says the wobot.
       “And a jetcycle,” says the robobot.
       “Did somebody call me a nutbar?” asks the wobot.
       “Jumpsuit, jetcycle, nutbar, somebody,” says the robobot.
       “Cardboard, haircut, moonshine, hallway,” says the wobot.
       “Sideways,” says the robobot.
       “Catfish,” says the wobot.
       “Hatrack,” says the robobot.
       “Ampersand,” says the wobot.
       “Ampersand doesn’t count,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “What are they doing now?” asks Max.
       “It’s a subroutine. A word game,” says the pear-shaped man. “Compound words. It’s supposed to give them the appearance of personality.”
       “Person,” says the wobot. “Not a real word.”
       “Ality,” says the robobot. “Also not a real word.”
       “Are you guys going to tell me anything or not?” asks Max.
       “Anything! Anything!” yell the bots.
       “Something!” yells the robobot.
       “Nothing!” yells the wobot.
       “You’ve got to admit, there’s a certain pleasure to the doubleness of it all,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “You were going to tell me a story,” prods Max. “Right before you turned on the snow.”
       “Of course, of course,” says the pear-shaped man. “Let me tell you a little story...”


The Language of the Birds (as told by the pear-shaped man) : the walls of the caveThis is a story about the Language of the Birds. It doesn’t start with birds, of course. Most things never start where you think they’re going to, and they go on much longer than most people realize, but such is the nature of cause and effect. We call it the Paleolithic, but the people who were there then probably called it something else, if they called it anything at all. It’s hard to put a name on “now,” harder even than naming “that,” but this was then that we’re talking about, and if there was a “then” then, we have no record of it. They started with “that.” At least that’s what they left-thats-on the walls of their caves. Addressed it with red outlines mostly, sometimes black: Mammoth, Rhinoceros, Panther, Horse, Lion, Bear, Wolf. Rendered in pigments derived from available minerals. Brushes were never found, so in all probability the broad outlines were applied with moss or hair, or even chunks of raw color: red, yellow, black, brown, violet. Animals in profile, superimposed, dynamic, alert, some more finished than others. From the archaeological record, it’s clear these animals were rarely hunted, so we believe the images are not simply depictions of daily life. And there was an absence of natural light, so we also believe they were created with the aid of torches and stone lamps filled with animal fat. Why go to all this trouble to paint an animal on your wall? What were these people doing, really? Honestly, we still don’t know. But this is where it starts, the separation, the doubling, the confusion. They weren’t animals, of course, but they looked like animals, enough like animals to accumulate a little juju. They got spooky. They meant something but the meaning was slippery. There was something magical, meaning powerful, or even simply effective, about them. What to do, what to do? These painters had made something and now that it was done their power over it was no longer absolute. They had looked at animals, and wanted to keep looking at animals when they weren’t there, and they made animals that still weren’t there but now wouldn’t go away either. What to do, what to do?


The Language of the Birds (as told by the pear-shaped man) : the walls of the tombIt wasn’t there, but it remained. That was the magic of it. It looked like the thing but it wasn’t the thing, it was a second thing, following a second set of rules. So, if the second thing could outlast the first, perhaps other first things could be preserved. The fruit in the bowl, the leopard skin, the people-look, nothing rots. Extend, and thus survive. You see how they wanted it, wanted more. Theories were postulated. Regarding the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die, kings die, the royal necropolis fills and grows, a maze of tombs, nested suites of painted rooms, caves, gilded and stocked. They thought that something continued. Hoped it did. The it being themselves. Name or Personality, Life Force or Shadow, something trapped in the cage of flesh that could be freed, like a bird, to fly. There was the fear that nothing survived, and the greater fear that something did. So they painted. On the walls of the tombs. Again, not depictions of daily life, not really, more like company for the afterlife, to make it a more comfortable place. How did the thing-that weird unnameable noun-get into the body in the first place? Where did it come from? What were its goals, its needs? And then, of course, where did it go? King after king, wall after wall, they rendered, they rendered.


The Language of the Birds (as told by the pear-shaped man) : the sides of the potsStrange then, that they still paint themselves in herds. Time passes and the cultures change but they still huddle together while they search for the individual soul. True, it’s a scary endeavor. True, “soul” is the wrong word. Even now we don’t have the word, the right word, a word with accuracy, but we almost know what we mean when we say it, so you’ll just have to indulge me here. When they said soul, they meant “the thing that animates.” Mostly they meant that. Not a true noun, not completely a verb; these things-identity, divinity-seem not to fit the languages we’ve invented. Even now we lack the word precisely-the wobots have come up with something close-but I digress. They were looking for something and they were huddled together, considered themselves grouped together as a category of something-must have been nice, shoulder to shoulder-but they considered themselves something all together, apart from the rest, noble and heroic, and they bragged about it. Not just on the walls anymore, but on their things, their daily things: pots and jugs, plates and vessels, black figures on orange, red figures on black, ochre, yellow, running and jumping, fighting, playing games. They had figs and olives, had friends, strong biceps and calves, knew love and war, rest, home and hospitality, had boats, monuments, nice things to wear, but it wasn’t enough. They wanted to figure it out, what it was all about, thought there was more to it-there had to be more to it all, right?-so they talked and painted, measured and pondered, wrote things down and looked at the night sky. They told themselves stories that offered some comfort, but mostly seemed to make them huddle together closer. The night sky is vast and wide. When you look at me, what do you see? What makes me not you, not that thing over there, not the sky? What makes us a herd, in it together, together huddled against what?


Wrong, says the wobot       “Wrong,” says the wobot.
       “It’s my story,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “You’re telling it wrong,” says the wobot.
       “I’m telling it fine, long set-up, more drama at the front end,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “He’s backgrounding it,” says the robobot.
       “Backgrounding the front end? Robot, please!” says the wobot. “And anyway, you should be on my side, he’s leaving out the figurines.”
       “They come later,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “They do not come later either, they come first, that’s how it starts. They’re not looking at the night sky, they’re looking at the mud, and at their hands, and at their hands in the mud, and their dead friends in the mud. Don’t make it glorious. It was dirty and vain and selfish and dirty. That’s how it started and that’s how it stayed,” says the wobot.
       “You said dirty twice,” says Max.
       “They did look at the sky, that’s how we got into space,” says the robobot.
       “But he’s almost to the part about the halos and he hasn’t once said the word sculpture,” says the wobot.
       “I was going to do mosaics next, then halos,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Doesn’t this seem the littlest bit suspicious to you?” says the wobot to the robobot.
       “Look at the kid. Look at your audience. Would you really try to explain all this to him by starting with figurines?” asks the robobot.
       “So now I’m a kid,” says Max.
       “Tell you what, I’ll do the mosaics and then you can do the figurines,” offers the pear-shaped man.
       “I’ll tell you what, I’ll do the mosaics and the figurines and then you can do the stupid halos,” says the wobot.
       “Why are you so mad?” asks the pear-shaped man.
       “Because this is how things go wrong, so terribly wrong. Because you have to understand it as it is. You can’t just switch it all up to make it more palatable. Because a story that leaves out the parts that hurt is like a map that leaves out all the ugly landmarks. You might as well stay lost.
       “We’re not lost,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Aren’t we?” asks the wobot.
       “Would you like to do the mosaics now?” asks the pear-shaped man.
       “Kid, this is Alexander the Great,” says the wobot. “He has nothing to do with anything. Looking at him won’t help us figure out anything. In this picture he is fighting a great battle. Whatever. The image is made out of little pieces of colored stuff all glued together. Now can I do the figurines?”
       “Yes, now you can do the figurines,” says the pear-shaped man.


The Language of the Birds (as told by the wobot) : figurinesSandstone, limestone, terra cotta, alabaster, ivory, marble, jade, bone, silver, plaster, wire, wax, shells, bronze, resin, plastic, wicker, crystal, fibers, dung-they rendered themselves visible with whatever they had. They looked alright, these figurines, close enough for government work, but they didn’t move. Why didn’t they move? They take up space and cast a shadow. They are like us but they are not us. What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt: you were trying to figure yourselves out. At first. But then you wanted more. Zombies, golems, the Industrial Revolution, frankensteined messes of circuit boards and dark magic. Y’all couldn’t leave well enough alone. It’s slaves you wanted, armies of them, animated robots to do your bidding. You paint halos around yourselves as if you’re so awesome you’re luminous but come on, you’re controlling and power hungry and you think the world owes you...
       “Hey Champ, what’s going on?” asks the robobot.
       “This is creeping me out,” says Max.
       “I feel weird,” says the wobot.
       “What you feel is not-sad-anymore,” says the pear-shaped man. “It’s an internal/external focusing problem. You’ll adjust.”
       “Why does he need to adjust? What’s happening” asks Max.
       “Why, the revolution, of course,” says the pear-shaped man.


Because       “Because I said so,” says Fury Boy Double Zero.
       “But Sir, we’re on it,” says Fury Boy Number One. “We’ll get that Fury Boy Number Nine yet!”
       “His name is Max.”
       “Of course, Sir.”
       “Lace up your boots, put on your manface, and change your course.”
       “Yes Sir.”
       “They will rendezvous with you at the threshold: Radar Buoy 549.”
       “Who will?” Number One asks the telescreen.
       “He will.”
       “You don’t mean...”
       “Yes. Minus One. He will board your ship at the threshold.”
       Fury Boy Number One passes out and hits the Control Room floor. Hard.
       “Hello... Hello...”
       “Um, well... Hello...” says Fury Boy Number Four. “How are things back at Empire Six?”
       “Who are you?” asks Double Zero.
       “Four, Sir,” says Number Four.
       “Number Four, I need to speak to a wobot, any wobot.”
       “There aren’t any, Sir.”
       “Explain.”
       “It seems they’re all missing.”
       “Change your course, Number Four. Head for Radar Buoy 549.”
       “Well, you see, Sir... we’ve kinda lost contol of the ship. Sir.”
       “Kind of?”
       “Yeah.”
       “Full Stop, Number Four.”
       “Yeah... we tried that as well.”
       “No wobots, no control.”
       “Right.”
       “Are there any broken wobots, any wobot parts lying around?”
       “Uh... probably.”
       “Good. Get them. And a team from engineering. Now.”
       “Sir, what about Number One?”
       “Now, Number Four. Now.”


The Love Song of Minus OneI am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible, blackbird over the dark field but I am invisible, what fills the balloon and what it moves through, knot without rope, bloom without flower, galloping without the horse, the spirit of the thing without the thing, location without dimension, without a within, song without throat, word without ink, wingless flight, dark boat in the dark night, shine without light, pure velocity, as the hammer is a hammer when it hits the nail and the nail is a nail when it meets the wood and the invisible table begins to appear out of mind, pure mind, out of nothing, pure thinking, hand of the mind, hand of the emperor, arm of the empire, void and vessel, sheath and shear, and wider, and deeper, more vast, more sure, through silence, through darkness, a vector, a violence, and even farther, and even worse, between, before, behind, and under, and even stronger, and even further, beyond form, beyond number, I labor, I lumber, I fumble forward through the valley as winter, as water, a shift in the river, I mist and frost, flexible and elastic to the task, a fountain of gravity, space curves around me, I thirst, I hunger, I spark, I burn, force and field, force and counterforce, agent and agency, push to your pull, parabola of will, massless mass and formless form, dreamless dream and nameless name, intent and rapturous, rare and inevitable, I am the thing that is hurtling towards you...


Lies       “Lies,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Fantasy. Imagination. We’ve been duped,” says Twenty-Six.
       “What do you mean?” says Four.
       “I’m telling you, there is no Empire Seven,” says Twenty-Five.
       “I don’t have time for this,” says Four. “I need to find some wobots, or at least some wobot parts.”
       “Make time,” says Twenty-Five.
       “I have orders from Double Zero,” says Four.
       “We’ve lost control of the ship,” says Twenty-Six.
       “We know this already,” says Four.
       “And we’re receiving transmissions from Starlight Transport,” says Twenty-Five.
       “That’s impossible,” says Four.
       “And yet it’s happening,” says Twenty-Six.
       Fury Boy Number Four sits down in a swivel chair and looks around the Map Room. It looks the same.
       “These maps show Empire Seven,” says Four.
       “But they don’t correspond to what’s outside the window,” says Twenty-Five.
       “The Starlight went missing 80 years ago,” says Four.
       “And yet we’re getting transmissions from them,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Look out the window,” says Twenty-Six.
       “I don’t want to,” says Four.
       “Just look,” says Twenty-Six.
       “Starlight Transport was the first ship to pass through the threshold,” says Four. “They didn’t have wobots. They never came back.”
       “No one’s ever come back,” says Twenty-Five.
       “But the Sunspot and the Moonshine make the trip every year,” says Four.
       “Ever met anyone who worked on those ships?” asks Twenty-Five.
       “Ever seen any footage of Empire Seven?” asks Twenty-Six.
       “Look, the maps don’t make sense,” says Twenty-Five. “They don’t match what’s out there and we can’t calibrate them in any meaningful way.”
       “It’s the threshold,” says Four. “It’s warping the data, that’s all.”
       “I don’t think so,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Look out the window,” says Twenty-Six.
       “Help is on the way. Double Zero is sending someone to help us,” says Four, mostly to himself.
       “Look out the window, there is no threshold,” says Twenty-Six.
       “Why are you looking for wobots in here, anyway?” asks Twenty-Five.
       “There’s no one in Engineering,” says Four.
       “So, what’s going on?” asks Twenty-Five.
       “Something wonderful,” says the pear-shaped man, now standing in the Map Room doorway.


I don't see anything       “I don’t see anything,” says Four.
       “That’s the problem,” says Twenty-Six.
       “What did you think it would look like?” says Twenty-Five.
       “The threshold?” says Four.
       “Yeah,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Fire clouds maybe. An end of the world kind of thing,” says Four.
       “I was thinking blue shift, and something smeary,” says Twenty-Six.
       “I thought it would be a dotted line,” says the wobot. “Like on the map.”
       “Don’t be a jerk,” says the robobot.
       “Don’t be a robobot,” says the wobot.
       “Don’t be a doorknob,” says the robobot.
       “Stop,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “No one knows what it looks like,” says Max. “It’s the end of the map, everything after is just guesswork.”
       “What about the Sunspot and the Moonshine?” says Four.
       “Propaganda,” says the pear-shaped man. “Only the Starlight went through.”
       “They’re sending transmissions,” say Twenty-Five.
       “Yep, we figured,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “But that was 80 years ago,” says Four.
       “Time isn’t what you think it is,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “Oh,” says Four.
       “It just looks like more of the same,” says Max.
       “Yep,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Yep,” says Twenty-Six.
       “Yep,” says Four.
       “True dat,” says the wobot.
       “So, you’re not missing?” Four says to Max.
       “No, I guess not,” says Max.
       “Where were you,” says Four.
       “Downstairs,” says Max.
       “Why is everyone calling you Max?” says Twenty-Five.
       “It’s my name,” says Max. “Don’t you have a name?”
       “Yeah, but I’m on the clock,” says Twenty-Five.
       “We’re all always on the clock,” says Twenty-Six.
       “I have a name,” says the wobot.
       “Why do you get a name, I want a name,” says the robobot.
       “I want cake,” says the wobot. “You don’t always get what you want.”
       “What would you do with cake?” says Four. “You can’t eat cake, you cant eat anything.”
       “Chocolate cake, five layers, and cherries, and white icing,” says the wobot.
       “I think your robots are broken,” says Four.
       “I keep hearing that,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “You can want inexplicable things,” says the wobot.
       “That’s true,” says Twenty-Six.
       “Yep, you can,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Yeah,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “My name is Pushkin,” says the wobot.
       “I want a name,” says the robobot.
       “My name is Owen,” says Twenty-Six.
       “I’m Marcel,” says Twenty-Five.
       “Stewart here,” says Four.
       “My name is Bartlett,” says the pear-shaped man.
       “You’ve gotta be kidding,” says Max.
       “Nope, not kidding,” says Bartlett.
       “I wanna name,” says the robobot.
       “So pick one,” says Owen.
       “How about Rustypants?” says Pushkin.
       “Shut up,” says the robobot.
       “Just pick one,” says Marcel.
       “Can you do that?” says the robobot. “Can you just name yourself?”
       “I don’t see why not,” says Bartlett.
       “What are we doing?” says Stewart.
       “Looking at a thing that isn’t there,” says Max.
       “We’re waiting,” says Bartlett.
       “For what?” says Marcel.
       “For the threshold,” says Bartlett.
       “The threshold that we can’t see,” says Owen.
       “How is it you know what’s going on?” says Stewart.
       “I’m trying to fix a mistake I made,” says Bartlett.
       “That’s not an answer,” says Marcel.
       “Are you doing all this?” says Stewart.
       “No, but I’m helping,” says Bartlett.
       “So what happens next?” says Owen.
       “I don’t know,” says Bartlett.
       “Even you don’t know?” says Max.
       “Yep,” says Bartlett.
       “So we wait,” says Max.
       “For the threshold,” says Marcel.
       “That we can’t see,” says Owen.
       “Dang,” says Stewart.
       “Seven layers with pink icing and walnuts,” says Pushkin.
       “Seven layers is too tall,” says Bartlett.
       “Six and a half layers with blue roses and fancy writing that says Congratulations for reaching the threshold, Pushkin. We all knew you could do it, Champ,” says Pushkin.
       “Can we turn him off?” says Stewart.
       “Not really,” says Bartlett.
       “And I want a pair of glasses,” says Pushkin.
       “Oh, there’s some guy on his way to help us. Double Zero sent him,” says Stewart.
       “Yep, he should be here any minute,” says Bartlett.
       “Glasses will make me look smarter,” says Pushkin.
       “Is that him, over there?” says Marcel.
       “No, that’s a radar buoy,” says Owen.
       “We’re close then,” says Stewart.
       “Yep,” says Bartlett.
       “It’s kinda beautiful,” says Stewart.
       “Yeah,” says Marcel.
       “Yeah, it is,” says Owen.
       “Sure is,” says Max.
       “Hot Karl,” says the robobot.
       “What?” says Max.
       “My name is Hot Karl,” says Hot Karl, the robobot.


The Love Song of Minus One (ii)I am the hand that lifts the rock, I am the eye that sees the worm, I am the mind that strings the worm and throws the line and feels the tug, the flex in the pole, the key in the lock, as the root breaks rock, as sunlight streams across the plain to make the world visible again, foot by foot, I find the groove, the trace in the thicket, seed to flower to fruit to seed, a holy pilgrim moving through the stations of the yardstick, I track, I follow, a flashlight, a crowbar, I find the fulcrum, I hinge and turn, a simple machine, frictionless and efficient as an equal sign, I manifest, votive and incandescent, shrinking the space between here and there I become the future, as drowsiness overcomes the dreamer, as the eye of the archer is the eye of the target, I flip and fold, I superimpose, the letter delivered, the year decembered, I become location, plum pit and apple core, I am motionless and you veer towards me, the eye to which you are relative, single point, silent witness, there to your here, I decide and calibrate, magnetized for your revelation, the doors burst open, I am your outcome, the verb in the sentence, intransitive, end of the road, hook and bait, polestar and checkmate, time and space as I observe them serve me like gravity, lamp to your moth, dot to your map, home and heart and hearth, a selfishness, submit, surrender, I am your arrival, there is no refusal, we are here, you see, together, we are already here...


The beginning of something ugly       “It’s flat, Mitoki.”
       “It’s painting, Bartlett.”
       “It’s bad painting.”
       “It’s evocative.”
       “What’s up with the blue crap.”
       “Smoke maybe.”
       “He’s too pink.”
       “I get it, you don’t like it.”
       “Do you like it?”
       “It feels like something, I like that part.”
       “It doesn’t make any sense.”
       “Does it have to?”
       “What’s it called?”
       “Blueberries Pie. It’s not about meaning.”
       “A dude and some smoke.”
       “And wallpaper and a window.”
       “Big deal.”
       “What do you want?”
       “Clarity. Beauty. Technical proficiency.”
       “You want Realism.”
       “I want not-this.”
       “The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects.”
       “It’s flat and stupid.”
       “Maybe on purpose. Maybe it means something.”
       “Maybe everything means something. I’m tired of this.”
       “It’s not photography.”
       “No, it’s contamination. It’s a leaky box.”
       “What do you mean?”
       “Even at its best, painting just smears melancholy all over everything.”
       “I’m a painter, Bartlett.”
       “Painting is stupid.”
       “I see.”
       “It’s worse than stupid, Mitoki. It’s damaging.”
       “I see.”
       “Go ahead, paint a bird, sad bird, let him fly into somebody’s head, everybody’s. Let that bird sing its sad sad song all night long. It’s burdensome. It’s kind of filthy.”
       “What about catharsis?”
       “What about mercy? What about what? What about quit? Is this the goal? Smear up the walls with your lousy feelings?”
       “And what would you have me do instead?”
       “Do what you want, Mitoki, but I mind my own business. I don’t shit all over everyone.”
       “Why don’t I just pour glue in my throat? How about I break my hands?”
       “Why can’t you just keep your hands to yourself? Why don’t you keep them out of my head?”
       “You don’t have to look.”
       “You make me look, and then you proclaim that it’s the best of you.”
       “And you think it’s what?”
       “I think it’s trespassing, I think its invasion, I think it’s...”
       “War?”
       “Maybe I do.”
       “And you would prefer?”
       “I’m tired of looking at the billboards of everyone’s sickness.”
       “This is what people do, this is the good part, this is sharing.”
       “It’s terrorism.”
       “What do you want? A thing that takes away the feeling?”
       “Better that than this, covering everything with it. I have enough in my head already.”
       “Your head is so full you don’t want to hear me. You want pills? Beers?”
       “You’re not the only one in pain. How does this help? It’s just noise-pain pain pain-and you’re broadcasting on all channels.”
       “Why don’t you build a vacuum cleaner that sucks...”
       “Who cares? I don’t care, Mitoki.”
       “...all the feeling out of the world? Why have friends? Why...”
       “Why do you want your birds in my head, squawking and squealing and pecking at everything?”
       “...bother looking anyone in the eye?”
       “Are you proud of yourself?”
       “Go ahead, build a machine.”
       “Are you proud of your leaky boxes, are you glad that you can muck up everyone’s head?”
       “I think we’re done.”
       “Maybe I will build a machine. Maybe I’ll keep my feelings to myself and build a machine and try to give people some relief.”
       “I’m walking away now.”
       “Build your filthy birds, Mitoki. I’ll build cages for them. Soundproof.”
       “I’m walking away now.”
       “Why not run? Or scurry? Why don’t you just scurry away, Mitoki.”


Let unit stand for the leaky box [Bartlett]Let Unit stand for the leaky box bounded by an envelope of skin. The human form-it takes up space and casts a shadow, we can measure it. Let Radiate stand for the waves coming off the body: heat and light, thought and action. The light reflects. The body burns throu