I’ve had the sensation as of recent that I’m laying on my head against a newly installed section of drywall. I’m standing and slumped against the wall with my cheek just a few inches from a tape line that has just been mudded and sanded. That new construction taste is in the air, which if you haven’t familiarized yourself with it as of late, is a bit like if the oldest materials on earth had a bit of a drug habit: it’s both earthy and chemical at the same time.
I wonder if one was to spend enough time around cement mixers, if their lungs would eventually become a Rachael Whiteread sculpture; two human chest balloons gray and speckled in concrete; delicate like dove eggs that breathe on their own and think of their future as birds.
This wall my head is against makes it hard to write. It makes it hard to paint. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever make something of purpose again. I guess that’s the dramatic ebb and flow of process. I think part of what has been on my mind is how I don’t have the desire to write about things in the way I once did. I have a different feeling of voice in my head that isn’t concerned with what it once was, and as someone that grabs desperately onto the past this is concerning to me. It makes me wonder about this current me and if they’re a very interesting person.
This is that large expanse of wall that gives no playful hints at closets or bedrooms, but instead only seems concerned with vantage points and long lines that are parallel but can seem to touch if given enough room to roam.
I have been thinking of being in a zoo a lot recently where the displays are windows in aluminum frames, set in concrete walls looking onto various animal exhibits. The aluminum frames have calking oozing out between them and the thick glass, giving the impression that each exhibit could be filled like a fish bowl, shaken and rinsed of its contents.
Looking at the monkeys they eat fruit in a bored manner, take two bites and throw half eaten fruit bowls to the ground. I think talking to people can be a lot like dressing up as monkeys and eating fruit. People casually discard threads of conversation and pick up others with the interest of clouds discussing precipitation: all is known and nothing is new.
Every once in awhile I lock eyes with someone and watch them carve the contents of a piece of melon perfectly down to the rind with a spoon the color of lightning. They are a surgeon with foods that have high water content. I can hear the spoon like a blade against the onslaught of a five o’clock shadow.
This morning two brown rabbits sat by a freshly dug well in the backyard. One ran by in hi-def and the other seemed a bit pixelated.
I wonder how each of them eats fruit.