Avouleance
Studying to better see and share the beauty
“I’ve wanted to tell someone this for so long…”
And I’m here to hear what she has to say, finally. I think it’s funny how far out we are or how many browns I rub off my boots as I cross the threshold. Outside deep night and bright lightning blend together into grey congealate. I’m soaked through, but at least in here without the wind I can be warmer, even if her radiator’s retired for rust and rheumatism. It’s a small hall, tight enough to foster intimacy but no good for crowds. She continues.
“I had the weirdest day, the sort that starts and ends weeks apart. Surely I should have been old enough for the drink I needed once it was over. But no, Dunning-Krugered so hard I swear I’m younger than yesterday. But If the world wants me to be a kid then I’ll bite, we should go south again. The beach was the best times. Is sometime in Septober good?”
She’s right, I remember it well. “Enough sun to melt you mind and mine the metal out of your skin for all to see your brilliant bronze. Don’t you just want to dissolve with me, into the sea, until we’re both too big to be bothered by other people our problems.” Of course I did, any time, just not now. Now was the time to go further in, after all the hall wasn’t the nicest, it was long due for another coat of paint for one… but no I’m not here to be negative. I go through into the kitchen, which was a little less cramped. The table took two chairs, three begrudgingly, but I didn’t have to choose where to sit this time. “You know what’s the weirdest thing? I did some math, but that’s not what’s weird, cause I was looking at the sun and well see for yourself
(4.90806662e11 feet)/(9.836e8 feet/s) = 499s
499/60 = 8.3
If the sun exploded you’d have 8 minutes and 18 seconds left to live, so I was thinking. What would I do if I knew? And I didn’t know, I felt for sure I would, that there’s be that one thing I just knew I could die doing, and that would sum me up. But all I could think about was fucking someone, no one in particular, and I hardly think I’d have time, if I’d had no luck so far would 8 minutes even matter, or 18 seconds. So I guess I’d do the next best thing to someone else, myself. That’s what’s weird, but what worse, what’s the worst is I wouldn’t even know. Cause it’s seeing the sun explode that kills you, it’s over as soon as you know it. So I’d probably not even be doing what I wanted. It got me thinking, so much of what I do is just what I have to do while we wait for something worthwhile. And what is that’s what my 8 minutes and 18 seconds were wasted on, and I wouldn’t even know it.” Stop, this isn’t, you can’t worry about this, please! “I just think if more people knew when they had 8 minutes and 18 seconds left, well I don’t know what they’d do, but I think more people would die cumming than shitting.” When she gets to that part I regret making tea, if you could call what I made tea. The creature living in the milk bottle was too evolved by this point for me to eat it ethically, so I just boiled a bag of atomised autumn. If it wasn’t drinkable, I’d at least be able to do a spot of divination. I looked in and saw an amorphous mass of dull and dark shades, almost alarmingly accurate.
Unfed and a little upside down on the inside, I decided on the stairs, specifically those to her room. Could use a lie down. “So there’s this girl, the sort who’s a painful epiphany, teaches you your anatomy through a series of aches and inadequacies. The sort you never knew someone had amputated away from you, until you see her, and she’s clearly so complete and so cool. I didn’t manage to ask her name, but I will eventually. Someday I’ll look into her eyes and not feel like I’m suddenly so high. Looking down at just how far I could fall into her. But someone will scale Everest eventually, and tomorrow I’ll do this. But she’s probably busy for new year’s, so maybe later.” My climb wasn’t as strenuous, there was the same worrying creak that mountains made, but otherwise the metaphor hardly holds.
I push open her door, it’s as much of a mess inside as I’d expected. Clothes in various shades and stages of wash intermingled freely. There was what was once food in a few places and the discarded packaging it was excavated from. But this storm still has an eye, with a wall all to its own was a whiteboard. “I wish other people heard the hive in my head, some apiarist or psychologist who knew how to get honey out of the hornets. But would they even believe me? That there’s a buzzing, but it wasn’t one buzzing it was so many different ones all at once, all too fast and too together to be any kind of coherent. I want to reach in, pluck out the one that’s worth listening to, but they don’t like that, they attack and I’m all kinds of stung instead. But I could never tell that to anyone anyway.” I want to comfort her, but I can’t, instead I’m left to look at her board. The ideas she managed to eke out as ink, so they’d stop moving. “I wonder why everyone has to have a past. Like if someone’s going to sell you a sandwich, I get that you hire teenagers, but why did the teenagers need to be babies first, why not just get people who were always old enough? You could employ people who only exist during office hours, they’d never get sick or sad, or be bereaved. Those are people I could be comfortable doing business with, without having to think about all that other stuff. How about a story that’s just a series of meetings where the same object is passed from one person to another. TALK TO HER. How about asking someone to meet up sometime. Stella you can do this, we believe in you and what you do however hard it might be to see. A story told entirely in eulogies. Call 080037226. Awful but you can do better if you’re willing to bleed for this. Someday you’ll look back on this and laugh. What if you knew which 8 minutes?” I made it out of the marker maze. “I don’t think I can make anything out of it, like I think sometimes I see a start or an end, or an idea I can make into something, but I try following it through and it ends up all frayed and short or flowing into too many other things. I felt like I needed to do this, to keep going, because eventually I’d find something I actually wanted to write and I’d know where I was going as well.” I bounce on the bed a little, need an outlet that isn’t shouting when she says this sort of thing, but I can’t articulate anachronistically. So no one stops her saying. “But I’ve better things to do with my 8 minutes and 18 seconds than perpetuating, perpetuating and perpetuating. Why didn’t we go back to the beach?” I decide that the bed wasn’t my best decision. There’s a garden if you’re generous, so out I go. the storm hasn’t shown any signs of stopping, I feel sorry for the iron cockerel trying to work out which way the wind’s going.
“You know, I think I feel better, there’s a clear crystalline clarity coming. That I can hold, that doesn’t get deformed no matter what, always points the right way.”
“I’ve wanted to tell someone this for so long. I had the weirdest day.” It takes me a moment to realise I’d reached all the way round and was re-reading the first note again. the sort that starts and ends weeks apart. Surely I should have been old enough for the drink I needed once it was over. But no, Dunning-Krugered so hard I swear I’m younger than yesterday. But If the world wants me to be a kid then I’ll bite, we should go south again. The beach was the best times. Is sometime in Septober good?”...
And I’m here to hear what she has to say, finally. I think it’s funny how far out we are or how many browns I rub off my boots as I cross the threshold. Outside deep night and bright lightning blend together into grey congealate. I’m soaked through, but at least in here without the wind I can be warmer, even if her radiator’s retired for rust and rheumatism. It’s a small hall, tight enough to foster intimacy but no good for crowds. She continues.
“I had the weirdest day, the sort that starts and ends weeks apart. Surely I should have been old enough for the drink I needed once it was over. But no, Dunning-Krugered so hard I swear I’m younger than yesterday. But If the world wants me to be a kid then I’ll bite, we should go south again. The beach was the best times. Is sometime in Septober good?”
She’s right, I remember it well. “Enough sun to melt you mind and mine the metal out of your skin for all to see your brilliant bronze. Don’t you just want to dissolve with me, into the sea, until we’re both too big to be bothered by other people our problems.” Of course I did, any time, just not now. Now was the time to go further in, after all the hall wasn’t the nicest, it was long due for another coat of paint for one… but no I’m not here to be negative. I go through into the kitchen, which was a little less cramped. The table took two chairs, three begrudgingly, but I didn’t have to choose where to sit this time. “You know what’s the weirdest thing? I did some math, but that’s not what’s weird, cause I was looking at the sun and well see for yourself
(4.90806662e11 feet)/(9.836e8 feet/s) = 499s
499/60 = 8.3
If the sun exploded you’d have 8 minutes and 18 seconds left to live, so I was thinking. What would I do if I knew? And I didn’t know, I felt for sure I would, that there’s be that one thing I just knew I could die doing, and that would sum me up. But all I could think about was fucking someone, no one in particular, and I hardly think I’d have time, if I’d had no luck so far would 8 minutes even matter, or 18 seconds. So I guess I’d do the next best thing to someone else, myself. That’s what’s weird, but what worse, what’s the worst is I wouldn’t even know. Cause it’s seeing the sun explode that kills you, it’s over as soon as you know it. So I’d probably not even be doing what I wanted. It got me thinking, so much of what I do is just what I have to do while we wait for something worthwhile. And what is that’s what my 8 minutes and 18 seconds were wasted on, and I wouldn’t even know it.” Stop, this isn’t, you can’t worry about this, please! “I just think if more people knew when they had 8 minutes and 18 seconds left, well I don’t know what they’d do, but I think more people would die cumming than shitting.” When she gets to that part I regret making tea, if you could call what I made tea. The creature living in the milk bottle was too evolved by this point for me to eat it ethically, so I just boiled a bag of atomised autumn. If it wasn’t drinkable, I’d at least be able to do a spot of divination. I looked in and saw an amorphous mass of dull and dark shades, almost alarmingly accurate.
Unfed and a little upside down on the inside, I decided on the stairs, specifically those to her room. Could use a lie down. “So there’s this girl, the sort who’s a painful epiphany, teaches you your anatomy through a series of aches and inadequacies. The sort you never knew someone had amputated away from you, until you see her, and she’s clearly so complete and so cool. I didn’t manage to ask her name, but I will eventually. Someday I’ll look into her eyes and not feel like I’m suddenly so high. Looking down at just how far I could fall into her. But someone will scale Everest eventually, and tomorrow I’ll do this. But she’s probably busy for new year’s, so maybe later.” My climb wasn’t as strenuous, there was the same worrying creak that mountains made, but otherwise the metaphor hardly holds.
I push open her door, it’s as much of a mess inside as I’d expected. Clothes in various shades and stages of wash intermingled freely. There was what was once food in a few places and the discarded packaging it was excavated from. But this storm still has an eye, with a wall all to its own was a whiteboard. “I wish other people heard the hive in my head, some apiarist or psychologist who knew how to get honey out of the hornets. But would they even believe me? That there’s a buzzing, but it wasn’t one buzzing it was so many different ones all at once, all too fast and too together to be any kind of coherent. I want to reach in, pluck out the one that’s worth listening to, but they don’t like that, they attack and I’m all kinds of stung instead. But I could never tell that to anyone anyway.” I want to comfort her, but I can’t, instead I’m left to look at her board. The ideas she managed to eke out as ink, so they’d stop moving. “I wonder why everyone has to have a past. Like if someone’s going to sell you a sandwich, I get that you hire teenagers, but why did the teenagers need to be babies first, why not just get people who were always old enough? You could employ people who only exist during office hours, they’d never get sick or sad, or be bereaved. Those are people I could be comfortable doing business with, without having to think about all that other stuff. How about a story that’s just a series of meetings where the same object is passed from one person to another. TALK TO HER. How about asking someone to meet up sometime. Stella you can do this, we believe in you and what you do however hard it might be to see. A story told entirely in eulogies. Call 080037226. Awful but you can do better if you’re willing to bleed for this. Someday you’ll look back on this and laugh. What if you knew which 8 minutes?” I made it out of the marker maze. “I don’t think I can make anything out of it, like I think sometimes I see a start or an end, or an idea I can make into something, but I try following it through and it ends up all frayed and short or flowing into too many other things. I felt like I needed to do this, to keep going, because eventually I’d find something I actually wanted to write and I’d know where I was going as well.” I bounce on the bed a little, need an outlet that isn’t shouting when she says this sort of thing, but I can’t articulate anachronistically. So no one stops her saying. “But I’ve better things to do with my 8 minutes and 18 seconds than perpetuating, perpetuating and perpetuating. Why didn’t we go back to the beach?” I decide that the bed wasn’t my best decision. There’s a garden if you’re generous, so out I go. the storm hasn’t shown any signs of stopping, I feel sorry for the iron cockerel trying to work out which way the wind’s going.
“You know, I think I feel better, there’s a clear crystalline clarity coming. That I can hold, that doesn’t get deformed no matter what, always points the right way.”
“I’ve wanted to tell someone this for so long. I had the weirdest day.” It takes me a moment to realise I’d reached all the way round and was re-reading the first note again. the sort that starts and ends weeks apart. Surely I should have been old enough for the drink I needed once it was over. But no, Dunning-Krugered so hard I swear I’m younger than yesterday. But If the world wants me to be a kid then I’ll bite, we should go south again. The beach was the best times. Is sometime in Septober good?”...
