this one might keep moving for a bit.

always a push-pull.

between something and nothing

caught between isolation,

and ceaseless sensing

of touching infinity and

violently recoiling

somewhere in between

falling and floating.

wanna feel real, play human

what really is contact?

words and messy sensation.

where thought meets |syntax|

am I the only person who wonders what it means to interact?

always hiding behind veils of propriety, careful correspondence.

follow the rules, step by step

formal principles, protocological conscience.

bounded by what we know to be true.

carefully aged and crafted consciousness.

dragging experiences behind us,

incessant daemons, eternal constants.

so much more than words,

these unwieldy layers of habit+context.

It is interesting to me how many layers and variations exist in instances of human connection or moments of mutual intelligibility, of how much (or how little?) actually takes place in human interaction.

In some interactions, conversation can be held entirely in the abstract. participants can appear to say nothing at all or nothing of substantial importance. and yet something is exchanged where words are not. some could say this is context, background knowledge, or shared experience or culture. while these are certainly factors in achieving mutual intelligibility, they are at times reductionist and cannot account for the situated complexity that takes place within interaction, as even when such categories are shared mutual intelligibility, genuine connection, can evade us in interaction. Paradoxically, none of these factors can be shared and mutual understanding can still effectively take place. These are merely surface level materialities that mask the peculiar nature of connection, understanding, meaning, itself.

Conversations can be guided by previous encounters, embodied moment, habituated thinking, and other intangible sublayers of experience. Most participants reciprocally and diligently invested in achieving mutual intelligibility, can overcome asymmetry in materially factored relatedness. Understanding, connection, meaning, is reciprocally forged through ongoing relatedness, dropping threads and picking up others, for the sake of concerted showing rather than telling.

I do this thing sometimes. 

Where instead of just sitting down to hash out whatever monster of a mental construct is cannibalizing my mental space, I just continue to let it fester. Avoiding it while it putrefies my thoughts. Pretending it doesn't exist, while it slowly eats me from the inside. This is me materializing it and it's overall process, in an effort to understand and disarm it. 

Pt. 1 the shedding

First, it takes my sleep. 

I am dreaming. My bird is sick. I can't see her eyes anymore. her face is gone. but she is crying. Her wings fall apart in my hands, coal grey feathers slip away between my fingertips. I just want her to be at peace. I know she is dying. I gently stroke her while my father shouts at me to get back to taking care of the other animals, she is just a bird. The dogs howling, escape out of the front yard. I can only cry.

I am awake. But I feel dead. Bloodless. Sallow. I lie here, remembering my dream. Remembering I am alive. That my bird is dead. Why am I here? 

I walk outside. There are coal grey feathers in the grass.

I walk along my street.

There, beneath the climbing roses of a white picket fence, lies a wing. A feathered appendage, ripped from the breast muscle, humerus protruding, repose across the grass. There is only the wing. Nothing more. Bloodless and disquieting. Something has happened. but I hear no birds.

my scapula press and pulse against the skin of my back uncomfortably.

This is not a dream.

Pt 2. new wings

It’s ultimately a process of calling it to the front, where I can see it. Revealing it.

While it burns the edges of my heart.

my chest fills with smoke. breathe in, breathe out. trying to shake this lens from my sight. wipe the uncertainty from my brow. i stumble to the water, just need a drink. need to get rid of this smoke, these clouds, so i can think. 

as i wade in my skin begins to sting, my back begins to bleed. the water turns red, tears flow down my cheeks. i close my eyes and grit my teeth, dive in to the water, searching for relief.

all at once i feel my skin rip to the bone, where my scapula pressed uncomfortably. all it once, i feel both ineffable pain and sublime release.

is this a dream?

i think ive found her again. i hear her whispering.

sending messages in the wind,

through the trees.

i sit still,

listening.

heeding these murmurs from the deep.