“It’s funny but it’s not a joke.”

Trapped inside this Universe sulks a boundary collapsing unity. To grasp this you must take the flanks with deep penetrating thrusts until existence succumbs to your will and lets out a pot. When you finger a hole into being you will see that a single action does not occur. One hole formed necessitates a prick. It is a Universal constant that all holes must, forever, be tethered to pricks. It’s integral to not only something as coincidental to our lives as the Universe, but also to us. The creation of a person is a series of pricks and holes fighting to have the last word. A person where hole wins gets to be a multitude of interlocked water-filled depressions. When prick wins we see a person obsessed with the erection of sod mounds. Erections that always end up being just another thing for people to wrap their knuckles round and manipulate. That is for the lucky ones. Droopy wills don’t even get to the erection part. Are you a prick? Does it droop? Don’t despair, you are a delicacy of the Universe. Unity is never permanent, not everything that goes inside stays inside. Food goes inside and sometimes it comes pumping out. It pumps hard, then it pumps harder, but it does end. And when it ends euphoria is produced. Don’t be confused though. The feeling is not connected to the pumping. This surge isn’t the urge. The urge is to purge. The feeling is to show that this Universe wants inside it even the most flaccid. It thinks us the most eclectic addition to its wide variety of slowly dissolving meals. However the massive stomach we call home is often overcome by an involuntary queasiness. It makes a mess on the floor, and that’s how you were born.

I’ll be quick, don’t worry. In and out, upside down. I don’t want to be here neither. I’m here because I care. Lay back, it’s fine. Close your eyes, and let it wash over you. Caring can be misunderstood. People think caring is about caring. But. Caring is all about fences. Yeah it is. Don’t question it, just trust. Outside of the fence they get eaten. Inside of the fence that’s where we get consumed. The one stone in the fence that’s an odd colour or slightly askew? That stone catches your eye. But don’t you dare touch that stone because that stone is why the whole thing doesn’t go and collapse, and when it collapses the whole thing will always find the time to collapse on you. When a fence does its job nobody pays it attention. When a gap opens up? The gap is the only thing any one gives a damn about.

Or something like that? It’s all pointless, the spreading is so utter. I apologise if any of this speech implies a reality. This oral invocation of meaning is like heating up a fire by throwing water on top of it. Understand? If you do then you’d be the first. Nobody around me growing up understood. They thought they did, but they didn’t. They’re meaning came to them through service and sacrifice. Otherwise known as tedium. The first thing is the group, the second thing, well, nobody’s ever needed a second thing. The group is life. You are not a unit of being. You have no nature beyond the group. You have no feelings beyond the group. Outside of the group is death. You perform for it. It wants, with consistent precision, you to perform your dance of creation. Babies. Hordes of babies, so many that you forget from whom to who they begot. Then those babies grow to do it all over again. You can’t make babies? That doesn’t matter, what matters is you perform as if you were making babies. That’s meaning. Will you not at least try? The group made every last whole of you. Every single piece. Top to bottom. The group asks for this one thing and you turn your back on it? Let me tell you about the chain. There is a great chain, you see, you’re attached to it like everyone is, whether you like it or not. If you don’t perform the baby making behaviour then you are separating yourself from that chain forever. That’s the big forever in case you were wondering.

Nothing’s new. Get it inside your skull. Now get it out of your skull. Now put it down on the ground and hope it goes away. There’s a type of green that only shows itself about plants during Spring. A pestering green that rips at the vision your eyes were trying to make. The group is like that green. It is what it is, the eternal continuation of perpetual replication.

Usual conversation between me and the son of the brother of my grandmother, we would have had a word for that relationship, would be the weather, how our day was going, and occasional insight on the best hazelnuts to use in making flour. You get them before they go soggy, when you squeeze the shell it shouldn’t give. Easy talking times where conversation sprouts. But, this one time, I got this vision from him. Was it a vision? Maybe it was a declaration? I might not get it perfect but I’ll give it a go. It starts off with the Moon creating the night, no wait, it wasn’t the night it was the Nightworld. I can’t remember what the distinction he gave was between the night and the Nightworld, it’s something like something else or something. On the opposite side is the Dayworld. The Dayworld is populated by the Sun and has existed for as much time as any time will. The Moon created the Nightworld and there were two reasons he gave for this. First is desire. Second is envy. Maybe that’s not right. No, it is, let me give you what he said, “When you’re close you see all, when you see all want goes.” And then it was like, not envy, sorry, it was like the Moon wanted to create something that belonged to it alone. “Better to be owner of the dark, than poor in the day.” The ejection the Moon caused to form the Nightworld was like thunder on a particularly damp night. I remember that one because it gave me back crackles when he mentioned it. Fires erupting out of fire causing flames that the like no person has ever seen. This struggle came to very little because the Moon was still miserable. Misery which swiftly morphed into resentment. The only cause of the Moon’s sadness, that the Moon could see, was the shining glory of the Dayworld. It upstaged the Nightworld, it made it appear like a shameful place. And so on. After previously denouncing the Dayworld the Moon would then sneak back into the Dayworld. The magnificence of the Dayworld faded the Moon compared to the prominence it had gotten used to in the Nightworld. And every day it spends there its confidence grew. Culminating in a resolution for the Moon to make a stand. An invasion of the Dayworld to destroy the Sun and turn everything into the Nightworld. Or the Sun gets angry and banishes the Moon and then the Moon returns, you get what I’m talking about. After he spun this out for me I asked him why he thought the Moon wanted the Sun and it wasn’t the other way around and he said, “Want goes up.” Or, to put it another way, desire flows in a specific direction, “All want is the same, it doesn’t matter what,” Or, there is a singularly expressed homogeneity in Universal valence, “Power is all of want.” Or, the application of power creates undesirable occurrences for the subject population. “If we destroyed the Sun then we wouldn’t even know what a Dayworld is,” I don’t know what a Dayworld is, “We wouldn’t even realise what we’re missing.” This whole vision was nice but I explained to him my take in a very calm manner, nodding and explaining how I understood what he was saying at the same time. My take is that the Moon, to me, looks like a disc of rock. It looks a bit like some rock that’s had someone bash at it with the end of an antler. Let me tell you, this was not graciously received. In fact he punched me, or maybe it was a slap. The point is I got hit for merely speaking my mind. Why I got hit? He, after calling me a flying ant, said, “I,” Meaning me, “Could sleep with a piece of stone up there.” Adding pointedly, “If that’s what you want.” If that’s what I want? Yeah, maybe that’s what I do want. No need to hit me for wanting it.

Some rivers don’t run into the open sea, they ease into a lake. That’s what they’d say about this great aunt I looked after. She never went outside, her body was worn out, okay. Because of that she enjoyed discussing the outside world with me, and not because I had any particular skill for it let me tell you. She’d start at me with these quick-fire questions, “What’s so-and-so doing?” With, “Who’s this-and-that getting with?” She probably expected me to give her a detailed review of the ongoing situation outside, but honestly most of the time I just grunted or nodded at her. Pretty inane right? I didn’t have much to say on any of it, I didn’t care. She’d get annoyed with me over that, maybe frustrated as well. I knew that because she’d tell me how I was a disappointment to her, “Pay more attention.” Then she’d explain how it used to be when she was young, the times when she would be knee-deep in gossip and innuendo. This earful I received was always preferable to actually doing her bidding for her. Did it really matter how they paired up? Maybe, maybe not. Would it matter if she knew about the last social mores that someone had broken? No. Other things she talked about? Let me think on that. She was interested in my own life, of course. Interested particularly in anything romantic that I might have been getting into. “But you have such a lovely smile.” Ah huh, “The more you get to know people the easier it gets.” Thanks. She always knew, some special sense, when new-comers had arrived as well. Maybe someone else was feeding her, but I don’t know who. New-comers meant she’d lay her concerns on thick. Those times were rough, and I flatly refused to talk to her about the topic of socialising or show her my smile. Not going to happen, you old gnat. Apart from the torture she was sometimes actually pleasant to talk to. She adored the animals that shared our settlement. And it wasn’t too much of a bother for me to pay attention to the animals as that was something I’d be doing anyway. She’d start at the dogs, “How much they eating?” And, “What they eating?” And, “What they coats looking like?” And everything in between. Then there were the cows and goats. She wanted to know if they were getting along fine. Like they were people to her. She wanted to know if any of the goats had got in a mood with me. They were always in a mood with me, they are sodding goats. Past the domesticated she would ask about the wild animals. They were a bit more difficult to report on but I did my best. Birds were the easiest to get a clue on because you’d only need to hear them singing. So it’d usually turn into bird hearing tales. One of those times she teased me about them, because, to her, they sing to attract a mate. And, therefore, I need their help. I’d be a sight sitting up in the trees and blurting out a tune, wouldn’t I? “No you don’t need to go up in a tree, comb your hair more than once a moon. That’ll do.” Alright then. I had a theory, I don’t know, at the time at least I thought maybe birds singing had some connection to them flying. Like their song has a rhythm to it and so does flying. Simple, right? It’s like the song is the ashes that the fire of flight leaves behind. But she’d tell me I was wrong about that, “No.” She’d say. Why don’t other animals sing? Mice? One example. “Mice would be eaten if they sang like a bird. Mice don’t want that. Mice want to hide.” Sounds about right, I guess, “Mice can have music when mice learn to fly.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I have one memory of my mother, the day she left. She held in her hand a walking stick and had a bag strapped over her left shoulder that wrapped round down to her waist. Seeing the wind move the grass. Feeling it move the hair on my head. Yeah. It’s not important. We think of mothers like fogs. It’s a relationship that obscures the world. Their milk satiates the infants. That’s all there is to it, what else do you want? Fathers? No, they don’t produce any milk.

A sticky palm should not slap. That’s true, but, but I’ve never been able to tell if women are too much of very little or too little of very much. No idea. A woman is like a goat. If you grab them by the tail you’re going to have a bad time, if you get round the other side then they’re going to butt you with their horns. Women are like hearing leaves clatter but not feeling the breeze. Women are like a bush full of bird song without a bird in sight. Women, okay, sorry but this is going to take longer than I thought.

For, roughly, a handful of days there was this girl that wouldn’t leave me alone. She’d shadow me without saying a word. She’d give me this uninviting smile when I tried to talk to her. It was like the shadow of a smile. A smile that fit the ordinary manners of a smile as to hide it’s own purpose and reality. Ask me what that reality is. What is its reality? I don’t know. Sometimes you can’t have a reality but you can see glimpses of it, like that. Only sleep saved me from her, but the second I rose from the winds of possibility she was there waiting but not seeming to wait. She had a subtle way of being around but staying at a distance. Very strategic. If I had a heart of fire then I would have shouted at her. Wrapped my teeth on her forehead. I couldn’t do that though. Maybe she was being friendly? Nah. Here, I was walking up hill with a massive hunk of rock, breaking the parts of my back that I needed not to be broke, and she stood there watching me do it. As usual she was around, but did she help? She didn’t help, not even a fleck of flint. She didn’t even notice it or say anything to me. You know encouragement and that. She just watched me carry it. If that was the other way around? I would have helped her. Would have been on the other end of that stone clasping on and trying to shuffle in time with her as we went. I’ve got to be honest, just thinking about it makes me want to grow claws. This kind of thing was enough to deal with, but it gets worse. She went and got this other woman, I don’t know where from, I think they knew each other from traveling together at some point. She must have told this woman all sorts. Am I perfect? No I am not. But I never did none of this stuff she’s accusing me of. I was showing poor manners apparently. I wasn’t respectful to this girl and wasn’t, “Trying,” Hard enough to get to know her. It didn’t matter what I said, I tried to tell the older woman what was going on and was ignored. None of what I said mattered. This slighting that I had committed earned me a massive hunk of cold shoulder for days after that. And it weren’t just from these two females neither, the whole lot of them had the hump with me. It didn’t bother me though, it was nothing to me. The alternative to that doesn’t even bear thinking of. Imagine. I only had to put up with it for a few days, but what if I had to spend even longer with that girl? I think I’d rather choose banishment over being with a partner that wanted to reduce my light to a flicker. Imagine. Spending every waking moment hoping for her to leave or pop it. Watching that smile with it’s dull yet malignant expression wearing down my consciousness every day until I finally took the plunge down the nearest rock face. Other than that though she was alright, she had a nice perfume and she seemed friendly enough to everyone else.

Long, straight, and black. I knew a girl like that. I mean her hair. Long because mistakes weren’t made. Straight because curls aren’t suffering. Black because it’s the opposite of age. She conquered dreams because no dream could have replicated the harmony her visage produced. But she took it as her life’s mission to belittle me at every spin. Unlike the previous girl mentioned this one had a contempt for me that was right up front from the start. And it was personal, or at least it got personal. Now let me tell you about her eyes. Her eyes were confused on their true nature. They wanted to be absent and outside this world, but then they went striking what ever they touched with ferocity. Now let me tell you about cows. If I give you a cow then you’ll learn how to milk, if I teach you how to milk then you’ll wonder why I did that without giving you a cow to use that skill on. You’d probably resent me and wonder why I created that knowledge in you only to make it useless by not giving you the physical opportunities to express it. This scenario is an exact encapsulation as to how I was treated by this woman. You understand now because of the cow? If you don’t it’s okay, I’ll try again. I’ve got no problem with being bossed around, but there’s a line. If that’s how our relationship is going to be then I, at least, need some shred of respect. Is respect right? Maybe appreciation. Appreciation is slightly less cold. The cow, you remember, this is how I was treated by this girl. She’d be critical of me constantly, that’s like the teaching part. But then would come the not giving me the cow phase, which we might also see as appreciation or respect depending on our sensibilities in that regard. I don’t know, appreciation denotes gifts whereas respect suggests a relationship of commonality. Why couldn’t I have her respect? No, I don’t remember anything specific, it was lots of little things. But it was little things that hurt, that’s the point. I’d tell her to take her tongues and pin them up behind her ears, but it never helped. Her heart soul? The soul in her heart? Her soul heart? Whatever it was it pumped a sort of beauty that I find appealing, but it also pumped this poison. The same poison that stinging nettles use to turn hands red. I should have boiled her in a stew and taken the sting out of her, but she wouldn’t have let me do that. What do I know though? She got on really well with other men. Boys swimming through her head. And what did I have going on? Not much. I’m just a cow. I think that was what I was saying? Women, if you have to watch the cow get milked then don’t tease the cow. Or, no, if you want the milk don’t say mean things to the cow. Show the cow some respect. Yeah, that’s the one.

The bottoms of the lake are home to the heaviest stones and the heaviest hearts. It might sound weird but in this World there are two things. Things that exist, and things that don’t. I hope we’re all onboard with that. Good. Rejection is why beauty exists. Rejection liberates the existing from the don’t. Rejection creates the heaviness, and it is responsible for making some hearts not want to be for how far they’ve sunk. Rejection worked for her. Make the herons say it with me, she was exquisite. Way more beautiful than anything you may be thinking of now, there’s no point you even trying you won’t get close. Seriously, it’s hilarious how far off you are, stop it. Some women are a person that has scaled the walls of beauty to some sort of impressive crag high above the clouds, but this woman was beauty pretending to be a person. She had not one fault. Her cheeks were amber at dusk. Her mannerisms were the slow fall of a feather. She showed my eyes the visual representation of what warmth felt like. Her presence taught me about the calmness that existed at the centre of arousal. She was the quiet background flow of the Universe. I only knew her for a moment, but that moment was bliss. I only received a sprinkle of her everything, but that sprinkle was brighter than the Sun. Together we shared a mute abundance. There were no words I could have said to her, and none that she wanted to say to me. When she finally left me, for wherever, my chest felt nothing but that silence. A silence that lingers with me until mountains collapse.

But that’s enough about women. There are actually more important things. Like our guts. Everything we do is built on top of our guts. It’s the first thing that welcomes us into the world and it stays there, with us, to the absolute end. It’s hold on us is utter, so complete that it’s hard to know what are the feelings of my guts and what is the feelings I have my self. Like, do I like pears or do my guts like them? Is it me that compares eating pears with suckling on the nipple of a citrus infused mega-mammary? Or is it those guts? It has to be the both of us. Pears ripe from the picking are gorgeous, you can’t get away from it. Butter? Yeah, that satisfies my guts. Got to admit it’s a bit much for me. Can’t have too much of it or I feel flush. But that first glob of butter, it pleases my belly like none other. It’s turned on its head with honey. Makes my guts splutter, but makes me giddy as all. Then there was the one thing I miss that settlement for, I’m talking about meat. Not just meat, beef. Every part of me craves it. The eyes want to see it transform from wet and red to juicy and brown. The nose wants the lingering smoke to reach it from across the next hill. And my teeth, hey, everyone knows you can’t lie to teeth.

Our present moment is the marriage of information to ignorance. And all I know, for fact, is a deep pool of ignorance locked in a struggle it can’t win with the leviathan whole of an expanding infinity. Eternal born. Never knowing death. The present sees a reason for us to be that is absent to the seller and the buyer. The connection we develop to the present is more powerful than a full Moon. Its power is such that it holds us down as strong winds try to rip us off our feet. Words, they drift aimlessly from our mouths. They are only brought to understanding by the community spokes of our wheeling present. The present allows the you to stop drowning in its own self. It allows you to breathe in the estrangement of familiarity. The thing its wrapped in is the thing it is. And if it belonged as a gift that I could give to you, then it wouldn’t belong at all.