Add Paul; move source files to src/

78 files changed, 3378 insertions, 0 deletions

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+TODO:
+-----
+
+* add in prose stuff from Elegies
+* remove numbers from filenames & links
+* add genre to YAML metadata blocks
+
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+---
+title: And
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: |
+        "What is your favorite word?"
+        "And.  It is so hopeful."
+    attrib: Margaret Atwood
+    link: 'http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a'
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 3
+    next:
+    - title: Words and meaning
+      link: words-meaning
+    prev:
+    - title: How to read this
+      link: howtoread
+...
+
+And you were there in the start of it all \
+and you folded your hands like little doves \
+that would fly away like an afterthought \
+and you turned to me the window light on your face \
+and you asked me something that I did not recognize \
+like a great throng of people who are not you \
+and I asked are we in a [church][] \
+and you answered with the look on your face \
+of someone [grieving something gone][] for years \
+ but that they had been reminded of \
+by a catch in the light or in someone's voice \
+and I think maybe it could have been mine \
+and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly \
+and I didn't get an answer from you but I got one
+
+I looked at the man in front of us with glasses \
+he was speaking and holding a book \
+and I didn't understand him he was far away \
+and I could tell I was missing something important \
+and you nodded to yourself at something he said
+
+[church]: boar.html
+[grieving something gone]: roughgloves.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: The angel to Abraham
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 10
+    prev:
+        title: Dead man
+        link: deadman
+    next:
+        title: Feeding the raven
+        link: feedingtheraven
+...
+
+Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear: \
+what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking \
+of your own grief, kill your son unknowing \
+of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?
+
+Abraham, you must know or hope that [God][] \
+will not allow your son to die; you must know \
+that this is a test, but then why \
+are you so bent on Isaac's destruction?  \
+Look at your eyes; there is more than fear \
+there.  I see in your eyes desperation, \
+a manic passion to do right by your God \
+whom you are not able to see or know.
+
+Am I too late?  I [will try][] to stay \
+your old hands, the knife clenched \
+within them, intent on ending life.
+
+Will you hear my small voice amongst the creaking, \
+or will it be the chance bleating of a passing ram?
+
+[God]: boar.html
+[will try]: i-am.html
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 5
+    next:
+      title: Ars poetica
+      link: arspoetica
+    prev:
+      title: And
+      link: and
+...
+
+So it's the [fucking moon][].  Big deal.  As if \
+you haven't seen it before, hanging in the sky \
+like a piece of [rotten meat][] nailed to the wall,
+
+a maudlin love letter (the i's dotted with [hearts][]) \
+tacked to the sky's door like ninety-eight theses.  \
+Don't stare at it like it means anything.
+
+Don't give it the chance to collect meaning \
+from your hand like an old pigeon.  Don't dare ascribe \
+it a will, or call it fickle, or think it has any say
+
+in your affairs.  It's separated from your life \
+by three hundred eighty-four thousand miles of space, \
+the same distance you stepped away from time that night
+
+you said your love was broken, a crippled gyroscope \
+knocking in the dark.  It was then that time fell apart, \
+had a nervous breakdown and started following you
+
+everywhere, moonfaced, always asking where you're going.  \
+You keep trying to get away from it but it nuzzles closer \
+and sings you songs that sound like the cooing of a dove \
+that will only escape again into an empty sky at dawn.
+
+[fucking moon]: deathstrumpet.html
+[rotten meat]: roughgloves.html
+[hearts]: proverbs.html
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+title: Ars poetica
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 6
+    prev:
+        title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+        link: apollo11
+    next:
+        title: The ocean overflows with camels
+        link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
+...
+
+What is poetry?  [Poetry is.][is]  Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry.  Here is
+the problem: life is very big and complex.  Human beings are neither.  We
+are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad
+interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all
+the hours of every day.  We much prefer knowing only that which is just
+in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt.
+This is why many people are depressed.
+
+Poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view, to maybe
+check on something else that isn’t staring us in the face so
+contemptibly.  Maybe something else is smiling at us, we think.  So we
+write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the [mirror][] of our
+existence to see something else.
+
+This is generally painful.  To make it less painful, poetry compresses
+reality a lot to make it more consumable.  It takes life, that seawater,
+and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains, the
+important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the
+senselessness of life.  Poetry is life bouillon, and to thoroughly enjoy
+a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make
+a delicious soup out of it.  To make this soup, to decompress the poem
+into an emotion or life, requires a lot of brainpower.  A good reader
+will have this brainpower.  A good poem will not require it.
+
+What this means is: a poem should be self-extracting.  It should be a
+rare vanilla in the bottle, waiting only for someone to open it and
+sniff it and suddenly there they are, in the orchid that vanilla came
+from, in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister
+vanilla plants.  They feel the pain of having their children taken from
+them.  A good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty.  The
+reader does nothing to achieve this—they are merely the receptacle of
+the feeling that the poem forces onto them.  In a way, poetry is a crime.
+But it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth.
+
+[is]: words-meaning.html
+[mirror]: moongone.html
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Art
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 1
+    next:
+    - title: Hymnal
+      link: hymnal
+    - title: Axe
+      link: axe
+...
+
+Paul was writing in his diary about art.
+
+_This is my brain_ he wrote.  _This is my brain and all it contains.  'I
+contain multitudes' said Legion.  I think it was Legion._  The big heading he
+had written at the top of the page (_ART_ it read, but only when looking at it
+from his point of view) sat cold and alone, neglected in the white space
+surrounding it.  He noticed this presently (but not after he had written a
+little more about multitudes), paused, frowned, and began to write again.
+
+_ART stands alone at the top of a blank page_ he wrote.  _It follows ~~itself
+in circles~~ its own footprints in a circle around its own name.  It leads
+nowhere but is present everywhere. ~~It contains~~ It contains multitudes.
+Every painting ever made is a painting of every other painting. Every song is
+a remix, a cover version._  He crossed out the part about songs for getting
+off topic.  He made a note to himself in the margin---_Music is not ART._
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: Axe
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 5
+    next:
+    - title: Leaf
+      link: leaf
+    - title: Building
+      link: building
+    previous:
+    - title: Dream
+      link: dream
+    - title: Art
+      link: art
+...
+
+Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees.  Or rather he
+went into the trees to chop wood.  He wasn't sure.  Either way it helped him
+think.  Last time he'd gone out, he'd had an idea for a shoe-insert company he
+could start called "Paul's Bunyons."  He chuckled to himself as he shouldered
+his axe and went into the forest.
+
+Deep into the woods he admired the organization of the trees.  "They grow
+wherever they fall" he said "but still none is too close to another."  He
+sounded like Solomon to himself.  He imagined he had a beard.
+
+He walked for a long time in the shadows of the forest, in its coolness.  It
+sounded like snow had fallen but it was still October.  The first time the
+trees seemed to radiate out from him in straight lines he stopped and turned
+around four times.  After he walked on he noticed it happened fairly often.
+
+Still, after he felled his first tree that day he realized they grew from the
+epicenter of his axe.  He paused in the small dark sound of the forest quiet.
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: The boar
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 8
+    prev:
+        title: The ocean overflows with camels
+        link: theoceanoverflowswithcamels
+    next:
+        title: Dead man
+        link: deadman
+...
+
+Now the ticking clocks scare me.  \
+The [empty][] rooms, clock towers, belfries; \
+I am terrified by them all.
+
+I really used to enjoy going to church, \
+singing in the choir, listening to the sermon.  \
+Now the chairs squeal like dying pigs---
+
+It was the boar that did it.  \
+[Fifteen feet][] from me that night \
+in the grass, rooting for God \
+knows what, finding me instead.
+
+I ran, not knowing where or how, \
+not looking for his pursuit of me.  \
+I ran to God's front door, found \
+it locked, found the [house][] empty
+
+with a note saying, "Condemned."
+
+[empty]: mountain.html
+[Fifteen feet]: telemarketer.html
+[house]: i-am.html
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+---
+title: Building
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 28
+    next:
+    - title: Yellow
+      link: yellow
+    - title: Cereal
+      link: cereal
+    previous:
+    - title: Stagnant
+      link: stagnant
+    - title: Axe
+      link: axe
+...
+
+_ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building.  The
+ceiling is_---here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking.  He crossed
+out _~~The ceiling is.~~_ _The floor is reality and the ceiling is
+~~aspiration~~ ~~desire~~ that which is desired.  CRAFT is building a chair
+from wood.  ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional message to a
+future person, the READER / VIEWER._
+
+_The important thing is they are both made of wood.  The important thing is
+they were both, at one point, alive natural things that grew and changed and
+pushed their way out of the dirt into the air.  They formed buildings out of
+the air. They didn't even try._
+
+_What separates us from them, the trees?  We have to try.  We must labor to
+create our ART, our buildings of air.  We lay them out brick by brick, we
+build them up by disintegrating trees and forming them again into what they
+were before.  Why must we do this? are there any advantages to this human
+method?_
+
+_Our advantage is memory.  Our advantage is the reaching-out over space and
+time to others with our words, our ART.  Our buildings last for generations,
+and after they are demolished they are written about, photographs are taken,
+we **remember**.  The act of memory is our only ART._
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Cereal
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 21
+    next:
+    - title: Man
+      link: man
+    - title: Dream
+      link: dream
+    previous:
+    - title: Sapling
+      link: sapling
+    - title: Building
+      link: building
+...
+
+He woke up after eleven and didn't go outside all day, not even to his Writing
+Shack.  What did he do?
+
+He watched late morning cartoons meant for children too young to go to school.
+He ate bowls of cereal.  He watched his mother play dominoes.  He played
+dominoes with her for a little while until she was winning by such a margin it
+wasn't fun for either of them.  He went down to the basement to do his
+laundry.  He pulled the chain for the light and it turned on like magic.
+"Electricity is like magic" he said to himself.  He thought he would like to
+write that down but his Implements were in the Shack.  He'd already built up
+so much momentum inside.
+
+Inertia?  he thought.  "What's the difference between inertia and momentum" he
+asked himself as he hefted dirty clothes into the washer.  "Maybe inertia is
+the momentum of not moving" he thought as he measured and poured the blue
+detergent into the drum.  "Momentum is the inertia of moving forward through
+time" as he selected WARM-COLD on the dial and pulled it out to start the
+machine.  "What do you think is the difference between inertia and momentum"
+he asked his mother when he opened the door at the top of the stairs.
+
+"When you switch over your laundry could you bring up my underwear from the
+dryer" she asked not looking up from her dominoes.  A thread of smoke curled
+from her cigarette and spread out on the ceiling.
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+---
+title: Dead man
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 9
+    prev:
+        title: The boar
+        link: boar
+    next:
+        title: The angel to Abraham
+        link: angeltoabraham
+...
+
+A dead man finds his way into our [hearts][] \
+simply by opening the door and walking in.  \
+He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly \
+about hunting or some bats he saw \
+on the way over, wheeling around each other.  \
+Look how [they spin][], he says, it's like the \
+ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other \
+in the space between their bodies.  \
+We mention the eels at the aquarium, how \
+their bodies [knot while mating][].  The dead man \
+was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots.  \
+His favorite was the one with the rabbit \
+and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out \
+and around the tree.  The dead man liked it \
+because he liked to pretend that the rabbit \
+was running from a fox, and the rabbit \
+always ended up safe, back in his hole.
+
+[hearts]: words-meaning.html
+[they spin]: moongone.html
+[knot while mating]: spittle.html
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: "Death's trumpet"
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 28
+    prev:
+      title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
+      link: todaniel
+
+epigraph:
+    content: |
+        So Death plays his little [fucking](apollo11.html) trumpet.
+        So what, says the boy.
+    attrib: Larry Levis
+...
+
+He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing, \
+top to bottom.  It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine \
+begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese.  Death loved caprese.
+
+He stood up and put the horn to his lips, imagining \
+it was a woman he loved.  He blushed as he realized \
+it was a terrible metaphor.  \
+He practiced for six hours a day---what else to do?
+
+Death looks at [himself in the mirror][moongone] as he plays.  \
+The trumpet is suspended in midair.  Damn vampire rules.  \
+Death is always worried he might have missed a spot shaving \
+but he'll never know unless a stranger is polite enough.  \
+Not that he ever goes out or meets anyone.
+
+He wakes up late these days.  Stays in bed later.  \
+He thinks he might be depressed.  The caprese has gotten soggy \
+since he made it, maybe three days ago or maybe just two.  \
+The sun streams through his kitchen blinds like smoke.  \
+He decides to go to the arcade.  When he gets there,
+
+there's only a [little boy][] with dead eyes.  So far so good.  \
+He's playing a first-person shooter.  Death walks past him \
+and watches out of the corner of his eye.  The kid's good.  \
+Death wants to congratulate him.  His trumpet is in his hand.
+
+[moongone]: moongone.html
+[little boy]: angeltoabraham.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Dream
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 4
+    next:
+    - title: Axe
+      link: axe
+    - title: Early
+      link: early
+    previous:
+    - title: Underwear
+      link: underwear
+    - title: Cereal
+      link: cereal
+...
+
+It had gotten cold.  He went to lay down in bed with a pad and paper.  He
+began to write.  Although he hadn't tried it much in bed before, he liked it
+mostly.  His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of
+switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon.  He wrote this down in the
+margin, for later:
+
+```hand
+Arm journeying across \
+the pg. like a \
+series of switch-
+backs down the wall \
+of the Grand Canyon \
+```
+
+His arm began to pain him.  He adjusted his position in the bed.  It didn't
+help much with the pain.  It still hurt as he wrote.  He began to be
+distracted by his mother's music playing in the next room.
+
+"Could you turn that down please" he hollered across the wall to his mother.
+She made no reply (music too loud).  He gave his arm a break to look at what
+he'd written.  He couldn't make heads or tails of it.  It looked like Arabic.
+
+He woke up gasping in a sweat.
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Early
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 35
+    next:
+    - title: Toothpaste
+      link: toothpaste
+    - title: Father
+      link: father
+    previous:
+    - title: Stump
+      link: stump
+    - title: Dream
+      link: dream
+...
+
+_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home
+while his mother watched TV and smoked.  Dinner had been chicken and peas with
+milk and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch.  At
+intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing.  He pretended not to notice.
+
+_ART = ARTIFICE_ he wrote.  _ARTIFICE MEANS UNNATURAL.  ARTIFICE MEANS BUILT.
+TO BUILD MEANS TO FIND A PATTERN & FIND A PATTERN IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD AT._  He
+thought about this while someone else won a car.
+
+"Do you think humans are good at finding patterns because we are hunters" he
+asked his mother.  She looked sideways at him and said "Sure Paul."  "Early on
+in our evolution we were hunters right?  And to hunt we had to see the
+patterns in seemingly random events, like where the gazelle went each year"
+"Paul I'm trying to watch TV.  If you're going to write this stuff go do it in
+your room you're distracting."  Paul got up and went to his room and lay down
+on his bed.
+
+"If the gazelle went to the same place every year" he thought "did they know
+the pattern too?  Or was it random for them, did they think each year 'This
+seems like a good spot let's graze here' without knowing?"
+
+He wrote _PATTERN = MEMORY_ in his notebook.
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+title: Elegy for an alternate self
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    css: autocento
+...
+
+Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined \
+from birth, or better still, say we are myself. \
+---But I still talk to myself, I build my world \
+through language, so if we say there are no words \
+this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal, \
+or better yet, a plant, or a flagellum motoring \
+aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things \
+that reason. Say that we're the only things that worry.)
+
+Say that I am separate. To say there's everything else \
+and then there's me is wrong. Each thing is separate: \
+there is no whole in the world. Say this is both good \
+and bad, or rather, say there is no good or bad but only \
+being, more and more of it always added, none taken out \
+though it can be forgotten. Say that forgetting \
+is a function of our remembering. (Say that humans only \
+worry about separation. Say that only humans feel it.)
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: epigraph
+subtitle: An epigraph
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 1
+    next:
+      title: How to read this
+      link: howtoreadthis
+    prev:
+      title: Death's Trumpet
+      link: deathstrumpet
+...
+
+I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
+From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future
+beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and
+another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and
+another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and
+Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and
+Attila and a pack of [other lovers][] and queer names and offbeat professions,
+and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these
+figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.  I saw myself sitting in
+the crotch of this fig tree, starving to [death][], just because I couldn't
+make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one
+of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there,
+unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one,
+they plopped to the ground at my feet.
+
+[other lovers]: spittle.html
+[death]: deathstrumpet.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Father
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 37
+    next:
+    - title: Paul
+      link: paul
+    - title: Fire
+      link: fire
+    previous:
+    - title: Toothpaste
+      link: toothpaste
+    - title: Early
+      link: early
+...
+
+"Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself
+as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed.  He wondered who built the
+shed for the first time since he'd been going out there.  "Mom who built the
+shed out back" he asked.  "That was your father" she said.
+
+His father.  Paul had never met him.  His mother had said when he was a kid
+that his father was caught by a riptide while swimming in the ocean.  He
+hadn't noticed what was happening until the land was a thin line on the
+horizon.  He became exhausted swimming back and drowned.  His body was found a
+week later by the coroner's estimate.  Paul never really believed this story
+because his mother's face was sad in the wrong way when she told it.
+
+She said he looked like his father but she also said all men look alike.  Paul
+realized he'd been standing at the kitchen window for a long time looking out
+at the shed without realizing it.  He went out to take an inventory of
+everything inside.
+
+"Where you going" asked his mother.  "To the shed.  I'll be back in a bit" he
+said.
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Feeding the raven
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 11
+    prev:
+        title: The angel to Abraham
+        link: angeltoabraham
+    next:
+        title: On formal poetry
+        link: onformalpoetry
+...
+
+You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life.  For me,
+it was last Thursday.  I was reading some translation of a Japanese
+translation of "The Raven" in which the Poe and the raven become
+friends.  At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his
+bedside and nurses him back to health.  The story was very heartwarming
+and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I
+heard a knock on my door.
+
+I shuffled over, sniffling but managing to keep my cheeks dry to open
+it.  Of course Charlie was beaming on the other side, with a bag of
+flowers and a grin like a [dog][]'s.  He bounded in the room without saying
+hello and threw the flowers in the sink, opened the refrigerator and
+started poking around.  I said "It's nice to see you too" and went to my
+room to get a camera, as well as a notebook for him to sign.
+
+When I came back he was on the floor, hunched and groaning.  I looked on
+the table to see a month-old half-gallon of milk---now cottage
+cheese---half-empty and dripping.  The remnants were on his mouth, and at
+once I saw my chance to become Poe in this [translation of a translation][]
+of a translation.  I knelt next to Charlie, cradled his head in my lap.
+He looked up at me with a stare full of terror.  I returned it levelly,
+making cooing noises at him until he calmed down.
+
+When he was calm he excused himself to be sick on my toilet.  He wouldn't
+let me follow but said he would sign whatever I liked when he got back.
+After half an hour passed and all I'd had for company was the ticking of
+the [clock][], I went to the bathroom door.  I knocked carefully---once, then
+twice---to no beaming face, no flowers.  I opened the door.  There was shit
+on the floor and the window was open.  There was a breeze blowing.
+
+[dog]: purpose-dogs.html
+[translation of a translation]: todaniel.html
+[clock]: boar.html
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Fire
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 39
+    next:
+    - title: Hands
+      link: hands
+    previous:
+    - title: Paul
+      link: paul
+    - title: Father
+      link: father
+...
+
+His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown.  "What the hell do you think
+you're doing" she hollered as Paul watched the shed.  "I'm burning the shed
+down" he said smiling "isn't it warm?"  "It's warm enough out here without
+that burning down" she said "go get the hose and put this thing out."  "But
+Mom" "Do it" she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now.  He went
+around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose
+pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end.  When it
+did it was not in a very strong stream.  "I don't think this is going to work"
+Paul said to his mother.  "God damn it I have to call the Fire Department" she
+said and went inside the house.  The shed continued in its burning.
+
+After the Fire Department put out the fire one of the men said "Your mother
+says you set this building on fire.  You know Arson is a major offense."  "I
+set it on fire" Paul said.  "Why?"  "Because ART wants to be random, it wants
+to be natural, but it isn't.  Humans create ART because we can't help but see
+patterns in randomness.  But we feel guilty about it."  The man nodded to
+another man in a blue uniform.  "We want the ART to feel natural, to feel
+random, but we can't stop seeing the patterns" as the man in blue walked over
+and put a hand on Paul's shoulder "ART is unnatural by its very nature.  I
+took my ART and gave it back to nature" as the man led him over to a black and
+white car and put him inside.  He was saying something about Paul's right.
+"No it's my left that was hurt" said Paul "but it's all better now."
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Hands
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 10
+    next:
+    - title: Toilet
+      link: toilet
+    - title: Hardware
+      link: hardware
+    previous:
+    - title: Shed
+      link: shed
+    - title: Fire
+      link: fire
+...
+
+He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing.  They were dry and
+cracked in places.  He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for
+some lotion.
+
+"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother.  "In the medicine cabinet" she
+said without looking up from the TV.  He walked into the bathroom and looked
+at himself in the mirror.  "I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a
+teenager."  He stared into his right eye, then his left.  He saw nothing but
+his own reflection fish-eyed in his pupils.  He opened the medicine cabinet.
+
+Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.
+
+```type
+What is it about hands that gives
+them such power?  It is that their
+power is hidden in the arm.  Push
+on the inside of the wrist--the
+hand closes.  Reach under the skin
+and pull on the outside tendons--
+the hand opens again.  Hands are
+only machines for grasping,
+controlled by the arm, not the
+mind.
+```
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: Hardware
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 14
+    next:
+    - title: Treatise
+      link: treatise
+    - title: Hymnal
+      link: hymnal
+    previous:
+    - title: Planks
+      link: planks
+    - title: Hands
+      link: hands
+...
+
+His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday.  "I'm glad to see
+you've taken my advice for once" she said.  "What do you mean."  "Applying to
+work at the Hardware Store.  I'm proud of you Paul."
+
+"Oh right.  Sure thing."  They pulled into the parking lot.  "Just be a
+minute" he said as he opened the car door.
+
+He walked under the door resplendent in its King William orange and white.  He
+saw the towering rows of shelves like mountain ridges in Hell.  He strolled
+among the fixtures, pipes, planks, sheets, plants (Why plants? he thought),
+switches.  He realized he didn't know the first thing about building
+furniture.  "I don't know the first thing" he muttered to himself "about
+building furniture.  I know the last thing would be a couch or chair or stool
+but the first thing is a mystery."  He turned around and walked straight out
+of the store and to his mother's car without looking up.
+
+"How'd it go" she asked starting the car.  "Great" he said.
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: How it happened
+genre: 'verse'
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 14
+    prev:
+        title: I am
+        link: i-am
+    next:
+        title: Love Song
+        link: lovesong
+...
+
+I was away on vacation when I heard--- \
+someone sat at my desk while I was away.  \
+They took my pen, while I was taking \
+surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky.  \
+They pre-approved the earth and the waters, \
+and all of the living things, without even \
+having the decency to text me.  It was not I \
+who was behind the phrase "creeping things."  \
+When I got back, of course I was pissed, \
+but it was [already written][] into the policy.  \
+I'm just saying: don't blame me for Cain \
+killing Abel.  That was a murder.  I'm not a cop.  \
+The Tower of Babel fell on its own.  The ark \
+never saw a single drop of rain.  I'm [the drunk][] \
+sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants, \
+holding up a sign asking where I am.
+
+[already written]: shipwright.html
+[the drunk]: problems.html
@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
+---
+title: How to read this
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 2
+    next:
+      title: And
+      link: and
+    prev:
+      title: epigraph
+      link: epigraph
+...
+
+This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be
+lived.  Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different
+person, with his own history, culture, and emotions.  True, they are all
+related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our
+shared planet, or our yearnings.
+
+Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called
+them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his
+death over sixty have been found and catalogued.  He called them heteronyms as
+opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under.
+They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and
+writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis
+wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque
+pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that
+are kind of similar to all the others.  It seems as though Pessoa found it
+inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather
+he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities,
+at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I'm less
+real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced
+by them all."  de Campos said of him at one point, "[Fernando Pessoa, strictly
+speaking, doesn't exist.][pessoa-exist]"
+
+It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the
+specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego.
+Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the [same river][] twice, and
+the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self twice.  It's
+constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from
+other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something
+that's never existed before.  The person I am beginning a poem is a separate
+being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I've
+written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself.
+
+In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a
+different person.  Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any
+number of possible people.  If you follow the threads I've laid out for you,
+there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different
+way there are quite a few more.  However, at the end of the journey there is
+only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe
+and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all.
+
+There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to find
+his way out of the desert.  He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of
+a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone
+enters it.  It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one
+from the room before and two choices.  In life, each of these rooms is a
+moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each
+time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don't always choose
+which to go through---in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren't
+allowed the luxury.
+
+What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities?  Is there some
+other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and
+will chose a different door at an earlier moment?  The answer to this, of
+course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn't keep us from
+trying through the process of regret.  We go back and try that other door in
+our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past.  This is
+ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not
+the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate
+model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original
+room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices.  This
+causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all
+possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best
+of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret.
+
+In this way, every moment we live is an [elegy][] to every possible future
+that might have stemmed from it.  Annie Dillard states this in a biological
+manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every glistening egg is a
+memento mori."  Nature is inefficient---it spends a hundred lifetimes to get
+one that barely works.  The fossil record is littered with the failed
+experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an
+asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method.  Each
+living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts
+the people that actually lived.  How many missed opportunities stand behind
+any of us?
+
+The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive.  There's no
+way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even
+when given the chance to do something again, we do it *again*, with the
+reality given by our previous action.  Thus we are constantly creating and
+being created by the world.  The self is never the same from one moment to the
+next.
+
+A poem is like a snapshot of a self.  If it's any good, it captures the
+emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with
+future selves, either within the same person or outside of it.  Thus revision
+is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the
+future self as changed by the original poem.  The page becomes a window into
+the past, a particular past as experienced by one self.  The poem is a
+remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy.
+
+A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however.  It leaves out the
+background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include
+anything that isn't contained in its finite frame.  In order to build a
+working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all
+possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect
+of all possible selves over time.  A poem leaves much of this out: it is the
+one person standing in front of twenty ghosts.
+
+A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in
+their respective times and places.  In this way a poem is outside of time or
+place, because it changes its location each time it's read.  Each time it's
+two different people meeting.  The problem with a poem is that it's such a
+small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see
+nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp.  It has been
+argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses
+the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace,
+with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject's eye; the
+landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we
+interact with it.  It's the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and
+interact with a small kernel.  This is why it's possible to write more than
+one poem.
+
+Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to
+extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which
+it has access.  It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to
+paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of
+identity outside the frame of the self.  It is the [kernel][] that contains a
+universe, or that speaks around one that's hidden; if it's a successful poem
+then it makes the smallest circuit possible.  This is why the commentary on
+poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try
+to unpack to get at that universality inside it.  A fortress of dialectic is
+constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes
+the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond
+it.
+
+With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of
+four years into this book.  Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the
+one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two
+resonate in some way.  You can read this book in any way you'd like: you can
+go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or
+you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and
+logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly
+through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines.  I
+think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way
+to communicate mine in all its multiversity.
+
+[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html
+[same river]: mountain.html
+[elegy]: words-meaning.html
+[kernel]: arspoetica.html
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Hymnal
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 2
+    next:
+    - title: Underwear
+      link: underwear
+    - title: Joke
+      link: joke
+    previous:
+    - title: Art
+      link: art
+    - title: Hardware
+      link: hardware
+...
+
+_It's all jokes_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal.  He had
+been writing non-stop all day, because he didn't count pee- or cigarette-
+breaks. _All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be_---and here
+he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of
+the word---he said often that he had no words.  He opened to a new page in his
+Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script _**HYMN 386: JOKES**_.
+
+Paul scowled.  Who had written in his Hymnal?  he wondered. He said it out
+loud a moment after: "Who has written in my Hymnal?"  He realized he was alone
+in his Writing Shack, which was really a shed in the back of his mother's
+garden.  He wondered why he had to say his thoughts before they became real to
+him (if this was a habit or an inborn trait).  He realized simultaneously that
+
+(a) he could ask someone and
+(b) that this was something he wondered every time he spoke his thoughts out
+    loud.
+
+He resolved to put the issue to rest by asking someone.
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: I am
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 13
+    prev:
+        title: On formal poetry
+        link: onformalpoetry
+    next:
+        title: How it happened
+        link: howithappened
+...
+
+I am a great pillar of [white smoke][].  \
+I am Lot's nameless wife encased in salt.  \
+I am the wound on Christ's back as he moans \
+with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist.  \
+I am the nail that holds my house together.  \
+It is a strong house, built on a good foundation.  \
+In the winter, it is warm and crawling things \
+cannot get in.  This house will never burn down.  \
+It is the house that I built, with my body \
+and with my strength.  I am the only one who lives \
+here.  I am both father and mother to a race \
+of dust motes that worship me as a god.  I have \
+monuments built daily in my honor in dark \
+corners around the house.  I destroy all of them \
+before I go to bed, but in the morning \
+there are still more.  I don't think I know \
+where all of them are.  I [don't think][not think] I can get \
+to all of them anymore.  There are too many.
+
+[white smoke]: deathstrumpet.html
+[not think]: howithappened.html
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Joke
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 33
+    next:
+    - title: Stump
+      link: stump
+    - title: Leaf
+      link: leaf
+    previous:
+    - title: Punch
+      link: punch
+    - title: Hymnal
+      link: hymnal
+...
+
+He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook.  He had run out of
+notecards and hadn't been able to convince his mother to go to the Office
+Supply Store for him.  He left a space underneath it and wrote.
+
+_"Tell us a joke" the listeners say to the clown.  They have gather together
+in the clearing because they have heard he would be there, and they have heard
+he knew very funny jokes that were also true.  "Tell us a joke that is true"
+they say._
+
+_The clown does not move from the stump.  He doesn't move at all.  The
+listeners watch, gap-mouthed, as a butterfly lands on his hat.  A breeze
+ruffles his coat and the butterfly flies away.  Hours pass.  The listeners
+grow impatient.  Some begin yelling insults at the clown.  Eventually, they
+begin to walk away into the woods._
+
+_The moon rises on the clearing.  The only people left are the clown and a
+listener, the last listener.  She has been waiting for the joke a long time.
+The clown opens his mouth and she leans in closer to hear.  He closes it as a
+tear falls onto his coat, then another.  He opens his mouth again in a sob.
+The listener walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder._
+
+_"I'm sorry" says the clown.  "Sorry for what" she asks.  "I don't know.  I
+don't know any jokes."  He disappears.  The last listener sits on the log and
+looks at the sky.  There are no stars._
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Leaf
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 3
+    next:
+    - title: Writing
+      link: writing
+    - title: Leg
+      link: leg
+    previous:
+    - title: Axe
+      link: axe
+    - title: Joke
+      link: joke
+...
+
+He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the
+earth floor of his Writing Shack.  He exhaled looking out of the window.  He
+hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven.  No bird did.  He
+inhaled.  He exhaled again in a way that could only be classified as a sigh.
+He sat down at his writing desk.  He began shuffling through what he'd
+written, trying to find some sort of pattern.
+
+"*Each piece of paper---each leaf---*" at this he smiled--- "*is like a tree
+in the forest.*" He was writing as he thought aloud.  "*I, as the artist, as
+the **writer**, must select which to use, chop down those trees, bring them
+back to my shed and*---and---" he frowned as he realized the only end to this
+metaphor was fire.  He ran his fingers through his hair in a self-soothing
+gesture.
+
+"I need to build some furniture" he thought.
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+title: Leg
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 12
+    next:
+    - title: Planks
+      link: planks
+    - title: Man
+      link: man
+    previous:
+    - title: Toilet
+      link: toilet
+    - title: Leaf
+      link: leaf
+...
+
+His first chair was a stool.  It was an uneven wobbly stool that would not
+support even forty pounds.  "So my first chair is a broken stool" he said
+after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor.  "Maybe I should start
+again but this time only with legs."  He began again but this time only with
+legs.  He built one leg, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to
+four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what
+he was now calling his Woodworking Shack.  He typed up a note on how to make
+chair legs.
+
+```type
+MAKING CHAIR LEGS
+
+1. get longish piece of wood
+2. cut it to length (4 feet I'd
+   recommend)
+3. whittle off bark
+4. sand smooth the leg
+```
+
+After he tried remembered tried standing the leg up, failing, and after much
+thought realizing that the ends needed to be flat, he typed one more line on
+his notecard:
+
+```
+5. make ends flat
+```
+
+He had no tools with which to flatten the ends of his leg.
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+---
+title: Liking Things
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 7
+    prev:
+        title: Problems
+        link: problems
+...
+
+The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*.  That
+stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog,
+playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that
+you're so goddamn unhappy all the time.  That, incidentally, is the
+definition of like: *that feeling you get when you forget how miserable
+you are for just a little bit*.  Thus people like doing stuff they like
+all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how
+horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves
+against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.
+
+The funny thing is that something we people really like to do is hurt
+ourselves and those around us.  We do this by thinking other people are
+more unhappy than we are.  We convince themselves that we are truly
+happy, ecstatic even, while they merely plod around life half-heartedly,
+or, if they're lucky, incorrectly.  We take it upon ourselves (seeing as
+we are so happy, and can spare a little bit of happiness) to help them
+become happy as well.  We fail to realize that the people will probably
+not appreciate our thinking that we're better than they are somehow, for
+that is what we do even if we don't mean it.  We forget that we are also
+unhappy, and that we are just doing things we like in order to cheer
+ourselves up a little bit, which really means that this cheering is
+working; but there is such a thing as working too well.  So in a sense
+what I'm doing here is cheering myself up by reminding you that you are
+unhappy; I'm trying to keep you honest in your unhappiness; and I admit
+this is usually called a dick move.
+
+In fact, the best way to overcome happy-hungering (this is the term as I
+dub it) is commit as many dick moves as possible, to keep people
+remembering that unhappiness abounds.  If you see someone smiling like a
+little dog who knows it's about to get pet or get a treat or go to the
+vet to donate doggy sperm, smile back.  Grin toothily (a little too
+toothily for a little too long).  Their smile will start to fade if
+you're doing it right.  Saunter to them, slide as if you're an Olympic
+quality ice-skater, as if you're a really good bowler who knows he's
+playing against twelve year olds and'll win by a hundred.  Get really
+close.  Far too close for what most people would call comfort.  And remind
+them of how awful life can be: "I really like your [shirt][]---really only
+children chained to looms can get that tight of a weave," you can say,
+or "You're not really going to recycle that coffee cup, are you?"  They
+will probably get angry, but that's what's supposed to happen.  By making
+dick moves, you can overcome what may be the biggest evil on this earth:
+Happy-Hungering.
+
+[shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Love Song
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 15
+    prev:
+        title: How it happened
+        link: howithappened
+    next:
+        title: Rough gloves
+        link: roughgloves
+...
+
+Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song.  Walking home in
+the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another.  Running away
+from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.
+
+I am telling you this because you wanted to know what it's like to tell
+something so beautiful everyone will cry.  I am telling you because I
+want you to know what it is to keep everything inside of you.  I am
+telling you.
+
+Can you see?  Can you see into me and reach in your hand and pull me
+inside out, like an [old shirt][]?  Will you wear me until I unravel on your
+shoulders, will you cut me apart and use my skin to clean up the cola
+you spill on the floor when you're drunk?
+
+I want you to know that I want you to know.  Do you want me?  To know is
+to know.  I, you want we.  We want.  That is why we're here.  To want is to
+be is to want and I want you.  Do you also?  Check yes or no.
+
+There is a way to end every story, [every song][].  Every criminal must be
+caught.  Even those who cry dry their tears.  I cannot tell you all I want
+because I want to tell you everything.  There is no art because there is
+no mirror big enough.  We wake up every day.  Sometimes we sleep.
+
+[old shirt]: ronaldmcdonald.html
+[every song]: swansong.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Man
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 22
+    next:
+    - title: Snow
+      link: snow
+    - title: Notes
+      link: notes
+    previous:
+    - title: Cereal
+      link: cereal
+    - title: Leg
+      link: leg
+...
+
+_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_
+
+Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library.  He had taken the bus into
+town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True
+Crime section.  He found this mugshot in a book titled _Crooks like Us_ that
+was published in Sydney.  He liked how cities were named after women, or how
+women were named after cities, whichever was true.
+
+The man in the picture's eyes were tightly shut, as though he'd just come into
+the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time.  His head was
+tilted up and slightly to the right.  He was wearing a short light tie with
+hash marks, and a pinstripe suit.  Paul wished the photograph was in color.
+He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
+
+The man's eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought.  His eyebrows
+lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look.  His mouth was
+slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin.  This was accentuated by
+the man's ears, which were large.  Paul wasn't sure why the ears made the man
+look happier.  He wondered what crime he had committed.
+
+Above the man's head was written _T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A_.  _THIS MAN
+REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_ was written over his suit, directly below his
+ribcage.
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 18
+    prev:
+        title: Ronald McDonald
+        link: ronaldmcdonald
+    next:
+        title: The mountain
+        link: mountain
+...
+
+The moon is gone and in its place a mirror.  Looking at the night sky now
+yields nothing but the viewer's own face as viewed from a million miles,
+surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded
+by.  He believes that he is [alone][], surrounded by desert and mountain, but
+behind him---he now sees it---someone is sneaking up on him.  He spins around
+fast, but no one is there on [Earth][].  He looks back up and they are yet
+closer in the night sky.  Again he looks over his shoulder but there is
+nothing, not even a desert mouse.  As he looks up again he realizes it's
+a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else.  The
+cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is
+completely alone.
+
+[alone]: apollo11.html
+[Earth]: serengeti.html
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: The mountain
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 19
+    prev:
+        title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+        link: moonegone
+    next:
+        title: Serengeti
+        link: serengeti
+...
+
+The other side of this mountain \
+is not the mountain.  This side \
+is honey-golden, sticky-sweet, \
+full of phone conversations with mother.  \
+The other side is a bell, \
+ringing in the church-steeple \
+the day mother died.
+
+The other side of the mountain \
+[is not a mountain.  It is a dark][apollo] \
+valley crossed by a river.  \
+There is a ferry at the bottom.
+
+This mountain is not a mountain.  \
+I walked to the top, but it turned \
+and was only a shelf halfway up.  \
+I felt like an unused Bible \
+sitting on a [dusty pew][].
+
+A hawk soars over the mountain.  \
+She is looking for home.
+
+[apollo]: apollo11.html
+[dusty pew]: and.html
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: Moving Sideways
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 5
+    next:
+        title: Problems
+        link: problems
+    prev:
+        title: Proverbs
+        link: proverbs
+...
+
+A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk.  Thus if
+you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become
+either drunk or sick.  By doing this you remove yourself from the
+equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe
+as it dances sideways drunkenly.
+
+Shit wait.  The problem is not that by observing you are observed
+(although quantum mechanics may disagree[^1]), because obviously dogs
+don't know we're observing them when we watch them through cameras in
+their little yard while they play and eat and poop---who poops knowingly
+on camera?  The problem is *the actual act of observing that distorts the
+world into what we want it to be*.
+
+What I want to know is this: Why is this necessarily a problem?  The dog
+is made, by mankind, to frolic and poop and sniff and growl and dig.  Why
+cannot the man be made to observe the world incorrectly around him, and
+worry about it?  Men have always wandered about the earth; does it not
+make sense that also they should wonder in their minds what makes it all
+work?[^2] In fact this is the very center of the creative being: the
+ability to move sideways, to dance with reality and judge it as it
+judges you, much like teenagers at the junior prom.
+
+Of course, reality doesn't judge us back.  But that doesn't mean that it
+doesn't!  If you think it's judging you, then *observe in your
+surroundings your own insecurities*.  It is obvious that this way of
+doing things is far from vogue; usually projecting [inner pain][] onto the
+outer world is classified as pathology.  However, this is because it is
+assumed that the outer world is *on its own terms*, which it obviously
+isn't, as far as we know.  It follows that as [there is no backdrop][backdrop]
+against which to judge our quirks, the quirks must not exist.  Thus all
+is right with the world.
+
+[inner pain]: telemarketer.html
+[backdrop]: philosophy.html
+
+[^1]: Quantum mechanics, as is well known, are the most hornery and
+    least agreeable of all mechanics.  The cost to get one quantum
+    serviced is usually at least eight times more expensive than the
+    cost of an average automobile tune-up, for reasons not clearly
+    known.  The quantum mechanics themselves claim it's the smallness of
+    their work that justifies the price, but it doesn't really look like
+    they're doing anything, and besides, my quantum always seems to
+    break again within six months---maybe I'm just driving it too hard.
+
+[^2]: I attempted to strike this terrible pun from the account, but
+    Hezekiah demanded I keep it if he were to continue the relation of
+    his prophecy-slash-advice column
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: Notes
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 8
+    next:
+    - title: Shed
+      link: shed
+    - title: Options
+      link: options
+    previous:
+    - title: Writing
+      link: writing
+    - title: Man
+      link: man
+...
+
+Paul began typing on notecards.  Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities.
+It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter.  It was a pain
+to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn't writing.  He
+started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to
+his grandmother, even reports for work (which is what got him in trouble).
+
+But this was all later.  For now he was writing his ideas, "notes" he now
+called them, something for him to combine later into something.  He didn't
+like to think about it.  On this particular cold winter morning, he wrote
+
+```type
+Woke up from a dream I was famous.
+One of the more famous people in
+fact.  I had written something
+everyone could relate to and at
+the same time proved my parents
+wrong.  Because I made a lot of
+money.  Or not a lot, but enough
+and more than they thought I
+would.  It was a good day.
+Woke up this morning and I was
+still cold.  Still Paul.  Still not
+good at furniture.
+```
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: On formal poetry
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 12
+    prev:
+        title: Feeding the raven
+        link: feedingtheraven
+    next:
+        title: I am
+        link: i-am
+...
+
+I think that I could write formal poems \
+exclusively, or at least inclusive \
+with all the other stuff I write \
+I guess.  Of course, I've already written \
+a few, this one included, though "formal" \
+is maybe a stretch.  Is blank verse a form?  \
+What is form anyway?  I picture old \
+women counting [stitches on their knitting][knitting], \
+keeping iambs next to iambs in lines \
+as straight and sure as arrows.  But my sock \
+is lumpy, poorly made: it's beginning \
+to unravel.  Stresses don't line up.  Syl- \
+lables forced to fit like [McNugget][] molds.  \
+That cliché on the arrow?  I'm aware.  \
+My prepositions too---God, where's it stop?  \
+The answer: never.  I will never stop \
+writing poems, or hating what I write.
+
+[knitting]: roughgloves.html
+[McNugget]: ronaldmcdonald.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Options
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 26
+    next:
+    - title: Stagnant
+      link: stagnant
+    - title: Paul
+      link: paul
+    previous:
+    - title: Swear
+      link: swear
+    - title: Notes
+      link: notes
+...
+
+What did he do when he was in the woods?  Where did he go?  Was there always
+one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit?
+Did he talk to the trees or only to himself?  When he chopped down trees, did
+he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods,
+behind his Shack, and dismember them?  Did he use any for firewood, or did the
+pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten?  When was the last time he built any
+furniture?  Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some
+point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?
+
+A tree fell in the forest: did it make a noise?  Paul typed his thoughts on
+cards, or wrote them in a book: did anyone read it?  If anyone did, was his
+life changed?  For the better or the worse?  Did he glance at the mess in the
+top drawer of his Writing Desk as he cleaned the Shack out long after Paul had
+quit using it?  Did he put tools in there or leave it empty?  What did he do
+with the desk?  Did he add it to the pile of rotting wood out back, or did he
+chop it up for a bonfire with friends, or a cozy fire with his wife and
+children, or did he take it to the dump three miles away to rot there?  Are
+these all the options?
+
+Did Paul ever think about any of this?  Walking in the woods one afternoon
+after becoming frustrated with his writing, did he sit on a stump and cry?
+Did he wonder whether he should have made other choices?  Did he consider
+quitting smoking?
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+title: Paul
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 38
+    next:
+    - title: Fire
+      link: fire
+    - title: Phone
+      link: phone
+    previous:
+    - title: Father
+      link: father
+    - title: Options
+      link: options
+...
+
+```type
+CONTENTS OF THE SHED
+
+- typewriter
+- writing desk
+- notecards (top drawer of desk)
+- pen (fountain)
+- inkpot (empty)
+- wood (a lot, more out back)
+- bare lightbulb
+- candle
+- wooden shelf with tools:
+    - claw hammer
+    - screwdriver
+    - prybar
+    - 2x wrench (different
+                 kinds)
+- tiller machine
+- push lawnmower
+- hatchet
+- axe
+```
+
+He typed the list in the typewriter and looked around some more.  He wanted to
+make sure he didn't miss anything.  Finally it hit him and he smiled.  He
+typed one more line, stood up, and went out of the shed.
+
+```type
+- Paul Bunyon
+```
+
+He got some kerosene from under the house, poured it around the base of the
+shed, lit a cigarette.  He smoked half of it and threw it down to start the
+fire.
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Philosophy
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 3
+    next:
+        title: Proverbs
+        link: proverbs
+    prev:
+        title: The purpose of dogs
+        link: purpose-dogs
+...
+
+Importance is important.  But meaning is meaningful.  Here we are at the
+crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also
+human-formed.  So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful,
+if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the
+fallible human intellect.  But here is the great secret: *so is the
+fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human
+intellect.* The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere
+invention of a mistaken human mind?  By real of course I mean
+"that which is *on its own terms*," that is, without any [modification][] on
+the part of mankind by observing it.  But such a thing is impossible to
+be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone,
+and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer.  So
+it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on
+its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.
+
+By this it is possible to see that nothing is knowable without the
+mediating factor of our mind fucking up the "[raw][]," the "real" world.  But
+by this time it would seem that this chapter is far far too
+philosophical, not to mention pretentious, so I must try again.
+
+[modification]: i-am.html
+[raw]: spittle.html
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Phone
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 16
+    next:
+    - title: Tapestry
+      link: tapestry
+    - title: Planks
+      link: planks
+    previous:
+    - title: Treatise
+      link: treatise
+    - title: Paul
+      link: paul
+...
+
+"Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a
+woman's.  He nodded into the receiver.  "Hello" Jill asked again "hello?"
+Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said "Hello Jill."
+
+"Do you remember me" she asked "we were in school together?  How have you
+been?"  "Pretty well" said Paul "I've been writing and making furniture."  "Oh
+that's nice" said the woman's voice tinny in the phone "Listen I ran into your
+mother at the Supermarket the other day and she said you need a job.  You
+still need one?"  Paul had to tell the truth.  His mother was watching him out
+of the corner of her eye as she was playing dominoes at the kitchen table.
+"Yes" he said sighing "Although woodworking takes up much of my time."
+
+"OK" she laughed uncomortably "I actually have something you could do for me
+if you think you can get away from woodworking a bit.  It's just data entry
+really basic stuff entry-level."  "What's it pay" he asked.  "Minimum but
+there is room for movement."  "OK" he said.  "Start on Monday okay?"  "Sure"
+he said "bye" and the tin voice in the phone said "Goodbye Paul see you" by
+the time he put it back on the hook.
+
+"Who was that" asked his mother.  "Jill Noe" he said.  "Oh her was she calling
+about a job for you?"  "Yes starts Monday" he said.  She smiled behind her
+glasses reflecting dominoes.
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: Planks
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 13
+    next:
+    - title: Hardware
+      link: hardware
+    - title: Punch
+      link: punch
+    previous:
+    - title: Leg
+      link: leg
+    - title: Phone
+      link: phone
+...
+
+```type
+EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
+STAYS THE SAME
+```
+
+This sat alone on a blank notecard in Paul's typewriter.  He stared at it,
+sipping at his too-hot coffee.  This made sense to him.
+
+He looked at the spot on the wall where he wanted a window to be, at the rough
+planks above his desk as they were lit by the bare hanging lightbulb.  He
+sipped his coffee again.  It was still too hot.  His Woodworking Shack was
+becoming full of wood that was not furniture.  He feared it would never become
+so.
+
+He threw open the door to the snow and the ground below it.  He reached for
+his axe on the wall.  He reconsidered.  He took a few tentative steps onto the
+blankness on his own.  He wasn't cold, not yet.  He walked into the forest.
+The snow crunched under his feet and did not echo.
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+---
+title: Prelude
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 1
+    next:
+        title: The purpose of dogs
+        link: purpose-dogs
+...
+
+Of course, there is a God.  Of course, there is no God.  Of course, what's
+really important is that these aren't important.  No, they are; but not
+really important.  All that's important is the relative importance of
+non-important things.  Shit.  Never mind; let's start over.
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+title: Problems
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 6
+    next:
+        title: Liking things
+        link: likingthings
+    prev:
+        title: Moving sideways
+        link: movingsideways
+...
+
+The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy.  No matter how hard
+or easy we try, it is not to be.  It seems sometimes that, just as the
+dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a
+good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and
+heartache.
+
+Being the observant and judgmental people they are, people have for a
+long time tried to figure out why they aren't happy.  Some say it's
+because we're obviously doing something wrong.  Some say it's because we
+think too much.  Some insist that it's because other people have more
+stuff than we do.  These people don't have a clue any more than any of
+the rest of us.  At least I don't think they do, and that's good enough
+for me.[^1] I think that the reason why people are unhappy (and this is
+a personal opinion) is that they realize on some level (for some it's a
+pretty shallow level, others it's way down there next to their love for
+women's stockings[^2]) that there is no background to put themselves
+against, no "[big picture][]" to get painted into.  This makes sense, because
+on one level, the level of everyday life, the level of *observation*,
+there is always a background---look in a pair of binoculars sometime.  But
+on another level, that of ... shit, wait.  There are no other levels.[^3]
+
+What's more, people try to explain how to get happy again (although it's
+doubtful they were ever happy in the first place---people are very good at
+fooling).  Some say standing or [sitting in a building][] with a lot of other
+unhappy people helps.  Some say that you can't stop there; you also need
+to sing with those other unhappy people about how unhappy you are, and
+how you wish someone would come along and help you out, I guess by
+giving you money or something.  I say all you really need to be happy is
+a good stiff drink.[^4]
+
+In any case, people have for some reason or another, and to some end or
+another, always been unhappy.  And people have always tried to figure out
+ways to be less unhappy---one of the most important things to people
+everywhere is called "the pursuit of happiness."  I think that calling it
+a pursuit makes people feel more like dogs, who are the most happy
+beings most people can think of.  By pursuing happiness, they're like a
+dog pursuing a possum or a bone on a fishing rod: two activities that
+sound like a lot of fun to most people.  I think most people wish they
+were dogs.
+
+[big picture]: ronaldmcdonald.html
+[sitting in a buiding]: feedingtheraven.html
+
+
+[^1]: This seems to be an attempt on Hezzy's part to set an example for
+    mankind.  It should be noted that he is an alcoholic, and not in any
+    shape to be an example to anyone.
+
+[^2]: It is thought that only the leg coverings of the female sex are
+    here referenced
+
+[^3]: You have hereby found the super special secret cheat code room.
+    Yes, this is just like Super Mario Brothers---you can skip right to
+    the end.  Go and face the final boss already!
+
+[^4]: See footnote, above
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: Proverbs
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 4
+    next:
+        title: Moving sideways
+        link: movingsideways
+    prev:
+        title: Philosophy
+        link: philosophy
+...
+
+[Nothing matters; everything is sacred.  Everything matters; nothing is
+sacred][sacred].[^1] This is the only way we can move forward: by moving
+sideways.  Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run
+for a goal.  The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the
+same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is,
+they *complete each other*.  Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail,
+smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple
+love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed
+flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet.
+Life is not life in a suburb.  [There are no rosebushes, groomed never.  There
+is no carpet, steamed at any time.][rosebush] The dog looks at you wanting you
+to love it.  It wants to know that you know that it's there.  *It wants to be
+observed*.[\^2]
+
+[sacred]: words-meaning.html
+[rosebush]: lovesong.html
+
+[^1]: Thank you Tom Stoppard.  Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.
+
+[^2]: Ah ha!  I knew this was going to happen at some point.  Now things
+    are going to get more interesting because the dog wants what we
+    thought was a bad thing, right?  Right?  Didn't we go through that
+    part about how observing made it impossible to really know anything,
+    and I had to start over because it's really hard to figure out what
+    you're talking about when reality slips out of your hands like a
+    fish, but you're not a cat with claws so it just flops right outta
+    your hand back into the lake.  (By the way, Nirvana is thought to be
+    what a drop of water feels upon flopping into a lake---doesn't that
+    seem important?  Doesn't it seem like a fish and a drop of water here
+    are connected?  It helps, of course, that the fish represents Reality
+    here.)
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Punch
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 32
+    next:
+    - title: Joke
+      link: joke
+    - title: Question
+      link: question
+    previous:
+    - title: Wallpaper
+      link: wallpaper
+    - title: Planks
+      link: planks
+...
+
+When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party.
+_**WELCOME BACK PAUL!**_  was written on a big banner across the back wall.
+Someone had ordered a confectioner's-sugar cake with frosting flowers on the
+corners.  It said the same thing as the banner.  "Welcome back, Paul" said
+Jill as he was at the punch bowl.  The cup was on the table as he ladled punch
+in with his right hand.  His left was wrapped in gauze.
+
+"Let me help you with that" said Jill.  Paul had a strange feeling this had
+happened before.  She took the ladle and their hands touched.  She picked the
+cup up in her right hand and used her left to lift the spoon.  "You know" she
+said "we were worried about you.  When Jerry heard about your hand he said
+'There goes one of our best data entry men.'" "I still can't really move my
+left hand" said Paul.  "That's alright you can take your time with the entry."
+"I'm sorry."
+
+"Sorry for what" she looked at his eyes.  He imagined her seeing fisheye
+versions of herself in them.  "I don't know" he said because it was true.
+"It's alright anyway" she said and placed the full punch cup in his right
+hand.
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: The purpose of dogs
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Book of Hezekiah
+    css: hezekiah
+    order: 2
+    next:
+        title: Philosophy
+        link: philosophy
+    prev:
+        title: Prelude
+        link: prelude
+...
+
+Okay, so as we said in [the Prelude][], there either is or isn't a God. This
+has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since ... since the
+first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way
+out of.  What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible
+third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.
+
+In fact, there are many dogs, and not only that.  There are also many types of
+dogs; these are called breeds, and each breed was created by man in order to
+fulfill some use that man thought he needed.  Some dogs are for chasing birds,
+and some are for chasing badgers.  Some are for laying in your lap and being
+petted all day.  Some dogs don't seem to be really for anything, besides being
+fucking stupid and chewing up your one-of-a-kind collectible
+individually-numbered King Kong figurine from the Peter Jackson film.  But the
+important thing is, (and here we go with important things again) all dogs have
+been bred by people for performing some certain function that we think is
+important.
+
+Note: *Just because we think it's important doesn't mean it is
+important.* But it might as well be, because what we as humans think is
+important is important.  But be careful!  just because something's important
+doesn't mean it means anything, or that it actually makes anything happen.
+Even though just because something makes something else happen doesn't mean
+it's important.  [Shit][].  Let me start again.
+
+[the Prelude]: prelude.html
+[Shit]: feedingtheraven.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Question
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 19
+    next:
+    - title: Sapling
+      link: sapling
+    - title: Reports
+      link: reports
+    previous:
+    - title: Window
+      link: window
+    - title: Punch
+      link: punch
+...
+
+"Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul
+asked Jill on his first coffee break at work.  It was in the city and his
+mother told him she wouldn't drive him so he'd had to take the bus.  Number 3
+he thought it was – he couldn't quite remember.  Jill said "Sorry what?"  Paul
+realized that she hadn't really noticed him there in the break room as he was
+hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and
+exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the
+coffee in.  He decided to repeat the question.
+
+"How do you think" he asked.  "Like everyone else I guess" she said "I have a
+thought and if it's important I write it down."  "Do you have to say them out
+loud for them to make sense?"  "Are you asking if I talk to myself?"  A pause.
+"I guess so" he said looking down.  He had a feeling this was a bad thing.
+"Sometimes" she said and walked out of the break room.  She didn't understand
+the importance of his question.  She popped her head back in a moment later and
+his heart leaped in his chest.
+
+"How's your first day going so far" she asked.  "Can you understand everything
+okay?"  "Yes" he said "you were right it's pretty basic."  "Good" she said.
+"Paul?"  "Yes."  "Do you have to say all of your thoughts out loud to remember
+them?"  He shook his head.
+
+Only all of the time, Paul thought to himself but didn't speak.
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Reports
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 24
+    next:
+    - title: Swear
+      link: swear
+    - title: Sapling
+      link: sapling
+    previous:
+    - title: Snow
+      link: snow
+    - title: Question
+      link: question
+...
+
+"Paul, you can't turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards" Jill told him
+after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six
+notecards.  He had spent the weekend
+
+1. going to the Office Supply Store to buy notecards and typewriter ribbon (he
+   found it surprisingly easily) after his first payday
+2. replacing the ribbon in his typewriter (this took approximately half an
+   hour, because he had to figure it all out on his own)
+3. opening the package of notecards (this took approximately four seconds,
+   although he still had to figure out how to do it on his own.  It was just
+   easier)
+4. carefully typing the reports he'd handwritten on letter paper onto the
+   notecards (he made many mistakes and threw away many notecards, though
+   later he used them for kindling)
+
+so understandably he was upset.  He told Jill all the work he'd gone to to
+type those notecard reports for her, for the company.  She shook her head.
+"Paul, you don't have to do all that work at home.  Just type it up on the
+computers here, that's all you need to do.  Thanks for the work though."  He
+nodded as she threw the notecards into the trashcan and left his cubicle.
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: Ronald McDonald
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 17
+    prev:
+        title: Rough gloves
+        link: roughgloves
+    next:
+        title: The moon is gone and in its place a mirror
+        link: moongone
+...
+
+When Ronald McDonald takes off his [striped shirt][], \
+his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks \
+like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
+
+in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery, \
+is he no longer Ronald?  Is he no longer happy to kick \
+a soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
+
+is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french fries \
+he gets for his fifty percent off?  I'd like to think \
+that he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
+
+in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.  \
+I'd like to believe that we are able to slough off selves \
+like old skin and still retain some base self.
+
+Of course we all know this is not what happens.  \
+The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same who \
+the next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
+
+He is the same that hugs his children at night, \
+who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they're \
+not so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
+
+a basket of fries in front of a field.  He cannot \
+take off the facepaint or the [yellow gloves][].  They are \
+stuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
+
+of his everyday associations.  His plight is that \
+of everyone's---we are what we do who we are.
+
+[striped shirt]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
+[yellow gloves]: roughgloves.html
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+---
+title: Rough gloves
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 16
+    prev:
+        title: Love Song
+        link: lovesong
+    next:
+        title: Ronald McDonald
+        link: ronaldmcdonald
+...
+
+I lost my hands & knit replacement ones \
+from spiders' threads, stronger than steel but soft \
+as lambs' wool.  Catching as they do on nails \
+& your collarbone, you don't seem to like \
+their rough warm presence on your [cheek or thigh][].  \
+I've asked you if you minded, you've said no \
+(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread \
+so stale it could [break a hand][]).  Remember \
+your senile mother's face above that table?  \
+I'd say she got the meaning of that look.  \
+You'd rather not be touched by these rough gloves, \
+the only way I have to knit a love \
+against whatever winters we may enter \
+like a silkworm in a spider's blackened [maw][].
+
+[cheek or thigh]: feedingtheraven.html
+[break a hand]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
+[maw]: serengeti.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Sapling
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 20
+    next:
+    - title: Cereal
+      link: cereal
+    - title: Shed
+      link: shed
+    previous:
+    - title: Question
+      link: question
+    - title: Reports
+      link: reports
+...
+
+He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch.  From first chop
+to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds.
+Maybe a little change.  He leaned against another tree and fished in his
+pocket for a cigarette.  He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other
+pocket for his lighter, failing to find it.  He searched his other pockets.
+He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion
+over his True Vocation, he'd resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he
+could figure it out).  He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I wonder if trees are protective of their young" he said to himself, then
+wondered if why he had to think his thoughts out loud, then remembered he
+always did this, then remembered his conversation with Jill.  He hoped she
+didn't.  He hoped that conversation was like the tree that fell in the forest
+with no one around.  "I wonder if a thought said out loud isn't heard by
+anyone, if it was made.  I think maybe this is what Literature (big L) is all
+about, if it's trying to make a connection because no idea matters unless it's
+connected to something else, or to someone else.  Maybe no wood matters unless
+it's bound to another by upholstery nails.  If 'the devil is in the details,'
+as they say (who are 'they' anyway?), the details are the connections?  That
+doesn't make sense.  Details are details.  Connections are connections.
+
+"Still, a neuron by itself means nothing.  Put them all together though and
+connect them.  You've got a brain."
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+title: Serengeti
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 20
+    prev:
+        title: The mountain
+        link: mountain
+    next:
+        title: The shipwright
+        link: shipwright
+...
+
+The self is a serengeti \
+a wide grassland with baobab trees \
+reaching their roots deep into earth \
+like a child into a clay pot \
+A wind blows there or seems to blow \
+if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts \
+like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish \
+it finds another hiding place watching you \
+Its eyes are blacker than wind \
+on the serengeti they are the [eyes of a predator][formal] \
+they are coming toward you or receding \
+a storm cloud builds on the horizon \
+Are you [running][] toward the rain or away from it \
+Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence
+
+[formal]: onformalpoetry.html
+[running]: squirrel.html
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Shed
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 9
+    next:
+    - title: Hands
+      link: hands
+    - title: Snow
+      link: snow
+    previous:
+    - title: Notes
+      link: notes
+    - title: Sapling
+      link: sapling
+...
+
+"What do you do all day in that shed out back" his mother asked one night
+while they ate dinner in front of the TV.  "Write" he answered.  "Write what"
+she asked in that way that means he'd better not say I don't know.  "I don't
+know" he said.
+
+"Goddammit Paul" his mother said.  "You're wasting your life out in that shed.
+You need to go out and get---" "I chop down trees too" he said.  "I make
+furniture out of them."  His mother's face did a Hitchcock zoom as she
+considered this new information.  "Is it any good" she asked, eyes narrowed.
+
+"It's getting there" he answered.  "I'm getting better every day."  "When is
+it going to be there" she asked.  "When are you going to sell this furniture
+of yours?"  "It'll be a while" he answered.
+
+"Then you'd better get a job until then" she said.
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+title: The shipwright
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 21
+    prev:
+        title: Serengeti
+        link: serengeti
+    next:
+        title: Spittle
+        link: spittle
+...
+
+He builds a ship as if it were the last thing \
+holding him together, as if, when he stops, \
+his body will fall onto the plate-glass water \
+and shatter into sand.  To keep his morale up \
+he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles [louder][] \
+and taunts him: Your ship will build itself \
+if you throw yourself into the sea; time \
+has a way of growing your beard for you.  \
+Soon, you'll find yourself on a rocking chair \
+on some porch made from your ship's timbers.  \
+The window behind you is made from a sail, thick \
+canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling \
+for milk or a chamberpot.  Your children \
+will have all sailed to the New World and left you.  \
+But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer \
+nail after nail into timber after timber, \
+but the wind [finally blows][] him into the growling ocean \
+and the ship falls apart on its own.
+
+[louder]: apollo11.html
+[finally blows]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Snow
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 23
+    next:
+    - title: Reports
+      link: reports
+    - title: Stagnant
+      link: stagnant
+    previous:
+    - title: Man
+      link: man
+    - title: Shed
+      link: shed
+...
+
+_I don't care if they burn_ he wrote on his last blank notecard.  He'd have to
+go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.
+
+He looked at what he'd written.  He'd been thinking about this for a while,
+felt the frustration build slowly like a thundercloud in the back of his mind.
+He thought he should write something else on the card, but everything he
+thought of seemed too confessional or too real compromising.  He didn't want
+anyone, not even the notecards, to know what he was thinking.  He decided to
+try for more of an interview with the paper.
+
+_Why?_  asked the notecard.  _Because there is nothing important on any of
+them_ he wrote back.  _What do you mean?  You have some good stuff in that top
+drawer there._  He looked in the top drawer.  It was stuffed full of notecards
+in no organization.  He could see bits and pieces of thoughts like leaves
+crunched underfoot in autumn.  _It will take so much organization_ he wrote.
+
+_Why is organization important?  Remember the trees, how they formed rows
+without trying.  No matter how the ideas fall, they make something.  The snow
+does that too_ he wrote.  _It doesn't try to make anything but it does._
+
+_No the snow is different_ the notecard was annoyed.  _The snow is a blank
+canvas that humans build into shapes or doppelgangers.  It makes nothing on
+its own._
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+title: Spittle
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 22
+    prev:
+        title: The shipwright
+        link: shipwright
+    next:
+        title: The squirrel
+        link: squirrel
+...
+
+My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought.  \
+When you turn away from me, my thought is broken \
+and forms anew with something else.  Ideas are drool.  \
+Beauty has been slobbered over far too long.  [God][] \
+is a tidal wave of bodily fluid.  Even the flea has some \
+vestigial wetness.  We live in a world fleshy and dark, \
+and moist as a nostril.  Is conciousness only a watery-eyed \
+romantic, crying softly into his [shirt-sleeve][]?  Is not reason \
+a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory?  \
+I want to kiss the world to make it mine.  I want to become \
+a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.
+
+[God]: howithappened.html
+[shirt-sleeve]: lovesong.html
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: The squirrel
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 23
+    prev:
+        title: Spittle
+        link: spittle
+    next:
+        title: Swan song
+        link: swansong
+...
+
+He is so full in himself: \
+how far down the branch to run, \
+how long to jump, when to grab the air \
+and catch in it and turn, and land on branch \
+so gracefully it's like dying, alone \
+and warm in a bed next to a summer window \
+and the [birds singing][].  And on that branch there \
+is the squirrel dancing among the branches \
+and you think *What if he fell?* but he won't \
+because he's a squirrel and that's what \
+they do, [dance][] and never fall.  It was erased \
+long ago from the squirrel, even \
+the possibility of falling was erased \
+from his being by the slow inexorable evolution \
+of squirrels, that is why all squirrels \
+are so full in themselves, full in who they are.
+
+[birds singing]: mountain.html
+[dance]: movingsideways.html
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: Stagnant
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 27
+    next:
+    - title: Building
+      link: building
+    - title: Stump
+      link: stump
+    previous:
+    - title: Options
+      link: options
+    - title: Snow
+      link: snow
+...
+
+"Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to
+himself on the bus ride to work.  His thoughts couldn't become real to him
+because he didn't want to look insane to everyone else on the bus.  His
+thoughts came to him like someone yelling over a hard wind.  He was trying to
+write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate
+than that of listening.  He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later
+he wouldn't be able to read what was written.
+
+"Thoughts are like the wind outside a moving bus" he thought "or rather the
+bus is a brain slamming into columns of stagnant air causing them to whistle
+past in a confusion of something."  He could barely hear the voice yelling to
+him over the wind.  "Speak up" he thought to the voice, then remembered it was
+his own.  He wished he'd remembered a book to read.
+
+He looked at his hands to pass the time.  They were dry in the winter air that
+had seeped its way into the bus.  He tried to figure out how many hours they
+would make it before cracking and bleeding.  "Maybe three or four" he thought
+accidentally out loud.  He looked around expecting stares from everyone on the
+seat.  He was surprised that he was the only one on the bus.
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+title: Statements
+subtitle: a fragment
+genre: mixed
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    css: autocento
+...
+
+I. Eli {#i.-eli .unnumbered}
+------
+
+"Can one truly describe an emotion?" Eli asked me over the
+walkie-talkie. He was in the bathroom, & had taken the walkie-talkie in
+with him absent-mindedly. I could hear sounds of his piss hitting the
+toilet water.
+
+"I can hear you peeing," I said. He didn't answer so I said in apology,
+"It's okay. Humans are sexually dimorphic." I was sitting on my blue
+baby blanket texting Jon, who was funny and amicable over the phone. He
+made a three-message joke about greedy lawyers and I would have been
+laughing if not for my embarrassment toward Eli. He finally came out of
+the bathroom and kept his eyes straight ahead, toward the wall calendar
+and not at me, as he passed through the family room into his bedroom,
+were he shut the door quietly. Presently I heard some muffled noise as
+he turned on his iPod. I guessed he didn't feel like talking so I stayed
+on my blanket watching the Price is Right and texting Jon.
+
+Drew Carrey was doing his wrap-up speech on TV when Eli finally came out
+of his room, red puffy streaks covering his face. His eyes and nose were
+red too, which was almost festive against the pale green and white of
+the wallpaper. I had been laughing at the goofy costumes on the Price is
+Right and the jokes Jon was texting me, but when Eli came out of the
+room I stopped and just looked at him as well as I could. He was staring
+at my right shoulder as he said, "Go home now."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I said go home now. I don't want you here anymore, because I just
+remembered I have someone coming over and I have to clean."
+
+"Look, Eli, I'm sorry---"
+
+"It doesn't have anything to do with you, I swear. Just go, okay? Go
+home now."
+
+I got up and tried to give him a hug but he withdrew from me sharply. So
+I walked around the coffee table as he sat down, not looking at me
+anymore, and stared at the blank TV. The blanket I had been sitting in
+was crumpled next to him like a dead bird. I opened my mouth but thought
+better of talking, and closed the door behind me slowly.
+
+II. Dimorphic {#ii.-dimorphic .unnumbered}
+-------------
+
+Oranges. Poison. A compromise
+between Mary & Judas. Blue
+baby blankets swaddling greedy lawyers.
+
+Can one truly describe an emotion?
+I cut my ankle with a razor blade.
+I can only go one at a time. Humanity
+has a seething mass of eels
+for a brain, mating in the water so forcefully
+that it could drown you under the moon.
+
+III. Declaration of Poetry {#iii.-declaration-of-poetry .unnumbered}
+--------------------------
+
+You have to go one line at a time, and you have to start on the first or
+second line.
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Stump
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 34
+    next:
+    - title: Early
+      link: early
+    - title: Swear
+      link: swear
+    previous:
+    - title: Joke
+      link: joke
+    - title: Stagnant
+      link: stagnant
+...
+
+He walked into the woods for the first time in months.  It was a bright summer
+day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight.  There
+was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing.  Instead of an axe, his right
+hand clutched his notebook.  His left was in his pocket.  A pencil perched
+behind his ear.
+
+He walked aimlessly until coming over a short rise he saw a stump.  He
+recognized his handiwork in the way the stump made a kind of chair back---flat
+until the axe had gone through far enough, then a frayed edge like a torn
+page.  Paul walked over to the stump and sat down.
+
+He looked up and tried to find a pattern in the placement of the trees.  There
+was none.  They grew randomly, beginning nowhere and ending in the same place.
+A squirrel ran down one and up another for no reason.  He opened his notebook
+and took his pencil from his ear but could think of nothing to write.
+
+A crow called hoarsely to another, something important.  Paul looked up but
+could not see the black bird in the leaves of the trees.  He looked back down
+to the cream-colored pages of his notebook.
+
+He was surprised that he'd written _YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART_.
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: Swansong
+subtitle: alternate version
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    css: autocento
+...
+
+This poem is dry like chapped lips. \
+It is hard as teeth---hear the tapping? \
+It is the swan song of beauty, as all \
+swan songs are. Reading it, you are \
+puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed. \
+Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing. \
+A honking over the cliff is all \
+they can do, and that they do \
+badly. You don't know where I'm going. \
+You want to tell me, You are not you. \
+You are the air the swan walks on. \
+You are the fringe of the curtain \
+that separates me from you. I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash. You are \
+the subtraction of yourself from \
+the world, the air without a swan. \
+Together, we are each other. You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Swan song
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 24
+    prev:
+        title: The squirrel
+        link: squirrel
+    next:
+        title: Telemarketer
+        link: telemarketer
+...
+
+Swans fly overhead singing goodbye \
+to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened].  You point \
+to them in formation, you tell me \
+you are not you.  You are the air the swans \
+walk on as they journey like pilgrims \
+to a temple in the south.  A curtain \
+there separates me from you, swans \
+from the air they fly through.  I say \
+that you are no longer the temple, \
+that you have been through fire \
+and are now less than ash.  You are \
+a [mirror][] of me, the [air without a swan][trumpet].  \
+Together, we are each other.  You \
+and I have both nothing and everything \
+at once.  We own the world and nothing in it.
+
+[ithappened]: howithappened.html
+[mirror]: moongone.html
+[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+title: Swear
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 25
+    next:
+    - title: Options
+      link: options
+    - title: Tapestry
+      link: tapestry
+    previous:
+    - title: Reports
+      link: reports
+    - title: Stump
+      link: stump
+...
+
+```type
+EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING
+STAYS THE SAME
+
+First, a history: I was writing my
+thoughts in a book.  I got a typewriter
+and typing things in a book
+became impossible.  I began typing
+on 4x6 notecards.  I ran out of
+ribbon in my typewriter.  I wrote
+on the 4x6 notecards.  I bought a
+new ribbon and new notecards.  Now
+again I am typing on notecards.
+    What have I been typing?
+Thoughts, impressions maybe, a log
+of changes to my mental state.  I
+waited long enough and I began
+recording them in the same way.  If
+I wait longer the ribbon will run
+out again and I'll write again, on
+notecards or in my book.  The same
+thoughts in different bodies.
+    That's what it means, "Every
+thing changes or everything stays
+the same."  It might as well be
+"and."  Local differences add up to
+global identities.  It's a hoop,
+right?  And we keep going around
+and we think it's flat but it's
+round like the Earth.
+```
+
+Paul pushed his chair away from the Writing Desk and stared at the notecard.
+He stood up, knocked his head on the lightbulb, swore.  He pulled the notecard
+from his typewriter and crumpled it up with his left hand. With his right hand
+he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes.  He put one in his
+mouth, threw the paper in the corner, grabbed his axe, went out into the
+woods.
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Tapestry
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 17
+    next:
+    - title: Window
+      link: window
+    - title: Toilet
+      link: toilet
+    previous:
+    - title: Phone
+      link: phone
+    - title: Swear
+      link: swear
+...
+
+_Apparently typewriters need ribbon.  Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to
+find anymore because no one uses typewriters.  Apparently I am writing my
+hymns from now on._  So he was back to calling his notes "hymns."  He looked
+up "hymns" in the dictionary.  It said that a hymn was "an ode or song of
+praise or adoration." Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself.  He
+thought maybe furniture.  There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was
+again calling his Writing Shack.
+
+The dictionary also had this to say about "hymn": that it was possibly related
+to the old Greek word for "weave."  "Weave what" Paul wondered to himself.  He
+wrote this down on a new notecard.  _Apparently "hymn" means weave somehow.
+Or it used to.  Or its cousin did. What is it weaving?  Who is it weaving for?
+I remember in school we talked about Odysseus and his wife Penelope, who wove
+a tapestry every day just to take it apart at night.  I forget why._
+
+_Maybe she wove the tapestry for Odysseus.  Maybe she wove it for herself.
+What did she weave it of?  Memory, maybe?  Or dream?  I think these words make
+a kind of tapestry, or at least the thread it will be made of.  I will weave a
+hymn to the gods of Literature, out of fiction. My furniture was a try at
+weaving, but I am shit at furniture.  So writing it is again._
+
+He wrote _**NOTES FOR A HYMN**_ at the top of this notecard.
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+---
+title: Telemarketer
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 25
+    prev:
+        title: Swan song
+        link: swansong
+    next:
+        title: We played those games too
+        link: weplayedthosegamestoo
+...
+
+It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
+street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical.  He never had,
+of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
+tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so.  He'd never thought about
+it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
+now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
+and from work in gritty blue buses.
+
+Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
+Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
+[ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
+listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
+when he holds it up to his ear.  The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
+overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
+a favorite of Larry's.
+
+His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
+are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
+think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
+his desktop wallpaper.  The walls were unadorned except for a few
+tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script.  When Larry made
+a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
+
+"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name).  My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
+name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling."  (customer
+terminates call).
+
+Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
+Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
+expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
+in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
+was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
+him from reading further into the script.  So when Jane said, "Sure, I
+have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
+
+"Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
+
+"It's Ms, not Mrs.  Em ess.  Miz.  No ‘r,' Larry."  She sounded patient, as
+if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
+title.  But how often can that happen?  Larry thought, and he was suddenly
+deeply confused.
+
+"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to,
+ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair
+in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes
+tightly.  "Why don't you have anything better to do?"
+
+Immediately he knew it was the wrong question.  Even before the silence
+on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
+mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
+service and complain loudly into the representative's ear.  The rep would
+send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
+and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
+David.  David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
+next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
+crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
+call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures.  After about half an hour
+of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
+for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
+office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way.  The
+world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
+
+Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My
+husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
+just a minute," and hung up.
+
+[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
+[eagle perched]: mountain.html
+[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: The ocean overflows with camels
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 7
+    prev:
+        title: Ars poetica
+        link: arspoetica
+    next:
+        title: The boar
+        link: boar
+...
+
+We found your [shirt][] deep in the dark water, \
+caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills.  \
+Your head on the shore was streaming tears \
+like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved \
+from fire.  The burning bush began crying \
+like a child who misses his mother.  Traffic \
+slammed shut like an eye.  God's mean [left hook][] \
+knocked us out, and we began swimming.  \
+Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake.  \
+Your [father][] beat your chest and screamed \
+for someone to open a window.  The air \
+stopped breathing.  Fish clogged its gills.  \
+Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out \
+your father's cries, but all their sweetness \
+was not enough.  No polite noises will be made \
+anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone.  \
+He opened your heart to air again.  Camels \
+flowed from you both like water from the rock.  \
+God spoke up, but nobody listened to him.  \
+We hung you up on the line to dry.
+
+[shirt]: lovesong.html
+[left hook]: roughgloves.html
+[father]: angeltoabraham.html
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: To Daniel
+subtitle: an elaboration of a previous comment
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 27
+    prev:
+        title: We played those games too
+        link: weplayedthosegamestoo
+    next:
+        title: "Death's trumpet"
+        link: deathstrumpet
+...
+
+There are more modern ideals of beauty \
+than yours, young padowan.  Jessica has \
+some assets, that I'll give you easily, \
+but in my women I prefer pizzazz.
+
+I don't want to bring you down, or make you think \
+[that your perfected woman isn't so][trumpet].  \
+It's just that, like Adam said, 2006 \
+has come and gone.  What did she do
+
+in that year anyway?  IMDB \
+has, surprisingly, none, though in '05 \
+she's in four titles.  Sin City \
+I've never seen, although from many I've
+
+heard it's good.  But it's still irrelevant--- \
+no matter how comely, she lacks talent.
+
+[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: Toilet
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 11
+    next:
+    - title: Leg
+      link: leg
+    - title: Toothpaste
+      link: toothpaste
+    previous:
+    - title: Hands
+      link: hands
+    - title: Tapestry
+      link: tapestry
+...
+
+Paul only did his reading on the toilet.
+
+He read in a magazine that the universe as we know it is actually a hologram,
+a three-dimensional projection of a lower, two-dimensional, "realer" reality.
+The article said that this model explains things like quantum entanglement,
+what it called "spooky action at a distance."
+
+After he finished, he ran back out to his Writing Shack and hammered out a
+Treatise on Literature as Spooky Action.  His mind was reeling.  He typed out
+an entire notecard on the subject.
+
+He stopped to catch his breath.  Reading it over, he realized he was
+completely wrong.  "Paper is made from trees" he thought "and so is
+furniture."  He had thought that ART and CRAFT were two separate enterprises
+but he realized in a flash that they were two sides of the same building.
+Were there other walls?
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Toothpaste
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 36
+    next:
+    - title: Father
+      link: father
+    - title: Treatise
+      link: treatise
+    previous:
+    - title: Early
+      link: early
+    - title: Toilet
+      link: toilet
+...
+
+He couldn't find a shirt to go to work in.  They all had stains on them
+somewhere.  He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of
+them were still visible.  Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought
+could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before.  Another looked like
+toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
+
+When he took the bus into work he couldn't relax.  He was paranoid everyone
+was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make
+sure they weren't.  They didn't seem to be but they could also be looking away
+just as he looked at them.  "The Observation Paradox" he muttered to himself.
+
+Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work.  She came around to his
+cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room.
+"You have a stain on your shoulder" she said "it looks like toothpaste."  "Do
+I" he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time "I didn't see that there
+this morning."  "How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?"  "I don't know
+skills I guess" he said and she grinned.  "You know vinegar will take that
+out" she said "although I think I like it.  You should start a museum of shirt
+stains!"  "I don't have that many shirts with stains" he said frowning.  "Yes
+you do" she said.
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: Treatise
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 15
+    next:
+    - title: Phone
+      link: phone
+    - title: Underwear
+      link: underwear
+    previous:
+    - title: Hardware
+      link: hardware
+    - title: Toothpaste
+      link: toothpaste
+...
+
+```type
+TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY
+ACTION FROM A DISTANCE"
+
+There is this thing called "spooky
+action at a distance."  Einstein
+mentioned it first I believe.  It
+is about how two electrons can act
+like they are right next to each
+other although they are very far
+away (lightyears even).  For a long
+time this puzzled scientists until
+someone (not Einstein) figured out
+that maybe the universe is a
+hologram or projection.  So what
+appears to be very far apart in
+the hologram might actually be
+very close in the substrate
+reality.
+    I want to talk about this
+effect in literature.  In literature
+the writer writes words on a
+substrate (paper) and later the
+reader reads the same words off
+the substrate.  Although the writer
+and reader might be very far apart
+from each other in time and space,
+they experience the same effect
+from reading the words.  Even the
+writer reading his own words after
+he has written them becomes a
+reader and feels who he was at
+that time, like a ghost.
+
+PROBLEMS:
+    Maybe the substrate isn't
+paper it's what the writing is
+about.  Where is the hologram?  Are
+physics and literature comparable?
+What if the universe isn't a
+hologram what then?
+```
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Underwear
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 3
+    next:
+    - title: Dream
+      link: dream
+    - title: Wallpaper
+      link: wallpaper
+    previous:
+    - title: Hymnal
+      link: hymnal
+    - title: Treatise
+      link: treatise
+...
+
+He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around.  "What" he
+called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother's question over the noise
+of the dryer.  He had heard her ask "Could you bring up my underwear from the
+dryer" but didn't want to touch her underwear any more than he had to.  "I
+don't want to bring up your underwear" he said to himself, and walked back
+upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.
+
+"Did you get them" she asked when he opened the basement door to the kitchen.
+She was sitting at the table playing dominoes.  "Get what" he asked.  She
+peered at him and said "my underwear."
+
+"Oh I didn't see them" he answered.  He reflexively opened the refrigerator,
+reflexively bent down, reflexively tried to feign non-disappointment
+(appointment? he thought) at seeing the same disappointing empty pickle jar,
+old head of lettuce, crusty mayonnaise he'd seen already on the way down to
+switch his laundry over.  "Paul" she said in that way that means Look at me.
+Paul looked at her.
+
+"You had to get them out of the dryer to put your clothes in.  Where did you
+put them?"
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Wallpaper
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 31
+    next:
+    - title: Punch
+      link: punch
+    - title: Window
+      link: window
+    previous:
+    - title: X-ray
+      link: x-ray
+    - title: Underwear
+      link: underwear
+...
+
+
+He didn't go back into the shed for a long time.  His hatchet was in there,
+and his axe.  He didn't want to face them.  His papers, he decided, could wait
+in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again.  The pain
+medication made him loopy.  He couldn't think as well as he was used to, which
+wasn't well to begin with.  Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as
+though they were on the TV in the next room.  Someone was cheering.  They had
+just won a car.
+
+His mother came in with lunch on a tray.  It was hot tomato soup and a grilled
+cheese sandwich.  "What have you been doing all day" she asked "you haven't
+just been staring at the wall have you?"  He had been staring at the wall most
+of the day.  The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper.
+"No" he said.  "What have you been doing then" she asked setting the tray down
+on his lap.  He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it
+spilled anything.  "Composing in my head" he lied.  "A novel of my
+experience."
+
+"Do you really think anyone will want to read about you" she asked and walked
+out of the room.
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: We played those games too
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 25
+    prev:
+        title: Telemarketer
+        link: telemarketer
+    next:
+        title: 'To Daniel: an elaboration'
+        link: todaniel
+...
+
+I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game \
+blowing on each other's' vocal chords to make music \
+on the tundra.  I thought about how \
+once we played the same game \
+and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats \
+was the same as a wind over frozen prairie.  \
+We are the Eskimo girls who played \
+the game that night to keep ourselves warm.  \
+I run my hands over [my daughter][]'s \
+voicebox as she hums a song \
+about a seal and about killing the seal and about \
+skinning it and rendering the blubber \
+into clear oil to light lamps.  \
+I remember you are my lamp.  She remembers \
+you although you left before she arrived.  \
+I can never tell her about you.  \
+I will never be able to express that taste of your oil \
+as we [pushed our throats together][spittle].  \
+I will never be able to say how \
+we share this blemish like conjoined twins.  \
+I will fail you always to remember you.
+
+[my daughter]: and.html
+[spittle]: spittle.html
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Window
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 18
+    next:
+    - title: Question
+      link: question
+    - title: Writing
+      link: writing
+    previous:
+    - title: Tapestry
+      link: tapestry
+    - title: Wallpaper
+      link: wallpaper
+...
+
+_**HYMN 386: JOKES**_
+
+_"Tell us a joke" everyone asks of the clown.  He sits on a log and begins to
+think.  Everyone waits gap-mouthed in anticipation.  A slight breeze ruffles
+the clown's coat, his pompom buttons, his bright red hair.  His nose becomes
+redder in the cold.  Hours pass.  All but the most dedicated of joke listeners
+leave him to rot ~~for all they may care~~._
+
+_The clown opens his mouth to speak but no words come out.  A tear falls down
+his cheek, and another.  He begins to sob.  The last joke listener comes over
+to comfort him.  She puts a hand on his shoulder.  He looks up at her, red
+face, red nose, white lips, and says ~~"Thank you."~~  He vanishes from the
+clearing.  The last joke listener sits on the log and looks up at the sky.
+The moon is full.  The world creaks on its axis._
+
+Paul looked up to the space on the wall where a window should be.  The shadow
+of his face wavered in the candle light.  He looked back down at the card he'd
+been writing on.  He read the card.  He crossed out the _for all they may
+care_ in the first paragraph, and _"Thank you"_ from the second one.  "What
+could he say" he thought to himself.  "What could he possibly say to her."  He
+went outside to clear his head with a cigarette.  He took his axe with him
+this time.
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+title: Words and meaning
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Elegies for alternate selves
+    css: elegies
+    order: 4
+    prev:
+        title: And
+        link: and
+    next:
+        title: On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site
+        link: apollo11
+...
+
+"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening
+that it does not quite," Jack Gilbert opens his poem "The Forgotten
+Dialect of the Heart."  In a similar vein, Hass's "Meditation at
+Legunitas" states, "A word is elegy to what it signifies."  These poems
+get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by
+giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.
+
+Words are the inevitable byproduct of an analytic mind.  Humans are
+constantly classifying and reclassifying ideas, objects, animals,
+people, into ten thousand arbitrary categories.  A favorite saying of
+mine is that "Everything is everything," a tautology that I like,
+because it gets to the core of the human linguistic machine, and because
+every time I say it people think I'm being [disingenuous][].  But what I mean
+by "everything is everything" is that there is a continuity to existence
+that works beyond, or rather underneath, our capacity to understand it
+through language.  Language by definition compartmentalizes reality, sets
+this bit apart from that bit, sets up boundaries as to what is and is
+not a stone, a leaf, a door.  Most of the time I think of language as
+limiting, as defining a thing as the [inverse of everything][] is not.
+
+In this way, "everything is everything" becomes "everything is nothing,"
+which is another thing I like to say and something that pisses people
+off.  To me, infinity and zero are the same, two ways of looking at the
+same point on the circle–of numbers, of the universe, whatever.  Maybe
+it's because I wear an analogue watch, and so my view of time is
+cyclical, or maybe it's some brain trauma I had in vitro, but whatever it
+is that's how I see the world, because I'm working against the
+limitations that language sets upon us.  I think that's the role of the
+poet, or of any artist: to take the over-expansive experience of
+existing and to boil it down, boil and boil away until there is the
+ultimate concentrate at the center that is what the poem talks around,
+at, etc., but never of, because it is ultimately made of language and
+cannot get to it.  A poem is getting as close as possible to the speed of
+light, to absolute zero, to God, while knowing that it can't get all the
+way there, and never will.  A poem is doing this and coming back and
+showing what happened as it happened.  Exegesis is hard because a really
+good poem will be just that, it will be the most basic and best way to
+say what it's saying, so attempts to say the same thing differently will
+fail.  A poem is a kernel of existence.  It is a description of the
+kernel.  [It is][].
+
+[disingenuous]: likingthings.html
+[inverse of everything]: i-am.html
+[It is]: arspoetica.html
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+title: Writing
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 7
+    next:
+    - title: Notes
+      link: notes
+    - title: X-ray
+      link: x-ray
+    previous:
+    - title: Leaf
+      link: leaf
+    - title: Window
+      link: window
+...
+
+He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic
+wrapping.  He remembered how to fill it from _The View from Saturday_, which
+he'd read as a kid.  It had been one of his favorite books.  He remembered the
+heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word "posh," and most of all
+his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar.  He
+smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he'd just bought.
+
+He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched
+as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while
+dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well.  He watched as again nothing
+filled the capsule.  He screwed it down a third time.  His thumb knocked the
+inkwell over somehow by accident.
+
+As he swore, stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper
+for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+title: X-ray
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 30
+    next:
+    - title: Wallpaper
+      link: wallpaper
+    - title: Yellow
+      link: yellow
+    previous:
+    - title: Yellow
+      link: yellow
+    - title: Writing
+      link: writing
+...
+
+While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his
+mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out.  He jerked his head up and
+to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left.  It cut deep into the
+back of his left hand.  A low thud didn't echo in the forest because all the
+needles and snow absorbed ~~sound well~~ the sound.
+
+When he got back to the house his hand wrapped in the end of his shirt he
+still felt no pain.  He called for his mother and found her watching TV in the
+main room.  He stayed in the kitchen not wanting to get blood on the carpet.
+She turned around cigarette dangling from her open mouth said "Oh god what
+happened."
+
+She drove him to the hospital in the car.  The radio stayed off the entire
+way.  Paul wanted to turn it on but ~~he didn't want~~ the desire not to annoy
+his mother was stronger.  They drove in silence.
+
+At the hospital after the X-rays and stitching and pain medication
+prescription the doctor said "You got lucky, son.  If that axe had hit a
+half-inch lower you'd have lost your hand.  You won't get full mobility back
+because we had to tie the tendons, but with therapy you should be able to work
+it pretty well."
+
+On the drive back home all he could think was that he was glad he didn't hit
+his writing hand.
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+---
+title: Yellow
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
+    css: paul
+    order: 29
+    next:
+    - title: X-ray
+      link: x-ray
+    previous:
+    - title: Building
+      link: building
+    - title: X-ray
+      link: x-ray
+...
+
+He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break.  He would
+walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a
+black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar,
+and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall.
+He'd remember that somewhere he'd read an article about yellow walls being
+calming.  "They use yellow in asylums" he'd say to himself.
+
+He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the
+half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with
+coffee pot and sink.  He didn't drink coffee but he would think about
+starting.  He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they
+were all the same ones as an hour ago.  "Or technically fifty minutes ago" he
+would say to himself.  Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee.  She
+would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a
+Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black
+sharpie, was still there.  Once he asked her why she checked.
+
+"Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge" he asked.  "I don't"
+she said.  "Oh I thought you did."  "I don't think so."  "Why do you check at
+all?"  "Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a
+chance to eat my lunch" she said.  "So you make sure it won't happen again."
+"No I'm waiting for the day that it does."