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+---
+title: About the author
+subtitle: (not pictured)
+genre: prose
+
+epigraph:
+    content: The body that surrounds him is his, but his insides are not.
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 19
+    prev:
+    - title:
+        Something about all music being performances of 4'33"
+        in places where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-433
+    - title: Riptide of memory
+      link: riptide_memory
+...
+
+------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
+He was born on a few separate occasions                              _green traffic ligts at night_
+
+There was the day of his conception \                                 _a TV in front of a dumpster_
+a wintery affair saved for those involved
+
+The day he wriggled forth \
+from the dark tunnel of nothing \                             _surprise photo of you at Walgreen's_
+his mother's womb
+
+The founding of his little city \
+deep inside by the smal builders \                    _a pink dress in the alley behind your house_
+alien as they were and still \
+somehow intimately familiar
+
+Like any city it had its ups \
+and downs the fever of 1994 \                 _me buying a Reese's peanut butter cup for a child_ \
+was especially devastating \                                  _[whose family couldn't afford it]_ \
+but they were a hardy folk \                                    _in front of me in line at Safeway_
+not much given to flight
+
+As all things must pass the \
+little city began slowly to decay \                              _trees at night their skeletons_ \
+the old ones claimed the young \                                       _revealed by a camera flash_
+had no respect for culture anymore
+
+They began to die off slowly \
+more quickly than being born \                            _two earthworms on pavement after a rain_
+the end was coming closer
+
+As the last breath was made \
+the last accounts closed in the city                        _keys tacked to a sign in Buffalo Park_
+
+It was given over to other builders                _man flipping a four-wheeler and walking it off_
+
+------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: AMBER alert
+genre: prose
+
+epigraph:
+    content: Apparently it does nothing.
+    link: TODO
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 6
+    next:
+    - title: 5. Exasperated
+      link: exasperated
+    - title: The Death Zone
+      link: death-zone
+    prev:
+    - title: Last bastion
+      link: last-bastion
+    - title: 6. Something about the nature of poetry and time
+      link: poetry-time
+...
+
+![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Amber_Hagerman.jpg]
+
+Lost things have a way of staying lost.
+They have to want to be found---is that why we tack up signs, hang socks from hooks in the park, have a box for what's been lost but now is found?
+Maybe the lost *want* to be found but we're looking in the wrong places.
+Maybe we speak the wrong language, the language of the found, to call to them.
+Maybe we should try another door.
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ 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'
@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+---
+title: The Big Dipper
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 2
+    next:
+    - title: The Moon is drowning
+      link: moon-drowning
+    - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
+      link: poetry-time
+    prev:
+    - title: The Death Zone
+      link: death-zone
+    - title: Table of Contents
+      link: table_contents
+...
+
+After searching for days or even months \
+I finally find it reclining lazily \
+above the peaks above the city as if to ask \
+Did you miss me? Yes very much I reply \
+and rush to embrace it but it smiles \
+and recoils and tells me No no you \
+have to try harder than that it says \
+I do not give myself up so easily
+
+I try a different tack \
+I sing to it bring it flowers nightly \
+I compare its eyes to the morning dew \
+it has not seen the morning dew \
+I say its mouth is the sunset over mountains \
+it knows mountains but the sunset \
+is only a rumor from the Evening Star \
+I tell the Big Dipper that it moves \
+like a quiet river across the earth
+
+Rivers I have seen says the Big Dipper \
+they sparkle in the light from my stars \
+Your stars like eyes I say and it smiles \
+No it says that is too easy \
+It turns its back \
+it walks home along the back of the mountain
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+title: Boy on the bus
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 9
+    next:
+    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+      link: i-think-its-you
+    - title: Last Bastion
+      link: last-bastion
+    prev:
+    - title: L'appel du vide
+      link: lappel-du-vide
+    - title: 5. Exasperated
+      link: exasperated
+...
+
+When he said Bible I heard his southern accent \
+and he had a face I expect all pastors must have \
+a round open honest face \
+that will always be a boy's face \
+though its owner may rightly call himself a man \
+near my age though I hardly call myself a man
+
+I have seen this face before whether in life or a dream \
+I can't tell \
+I might've seen him on the street once \
+twice who knows and his pastor's moon face \
+reminds me of something \
+some distant light my life used to own
+
+One night on my birthday the moon was so strong it cast shadows \
+I could see to the far hill and back it was all clear to me
+
+The moon hasn't done that in a long time \
+its face has been obscured by clouds for weeks \
+and that boy on the bus his face I've forgotten \
+I thought I recognized a good number of people \
+on that bus who I didn't know at all
@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+title: The Death Zone
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: And my life became death.
+    attrib: Philip Gould
+    link: TODO
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 7
+    next:
+    - title: The Big Dipper
+      link: big-dipper
+    - title: Exasperated
+      link: exasperated
+    prev:
+    - title: Exasperated
+      link: exasperated
+    - title: AMBER alert
+      link: amber-alert
+...
+
+![TODO]
+
+When I think of death I think \
+of Peter Falk in _The Princess Bride_ patting \
+his pockets as he leaves the room
+
+Life is a series of doors or so \
+they say but I ask them this \
+where does that last door lead?
+
+For Falk maybe it leads backstage \
+a black-walled catered affair with stage \
+lights slowly baking stale muffins
+
+Sweaty cheese leaking onto dried-out \
+grapes a chocolate fountain clogged \
+by some errant strawberry crown
+
+but this is not where it leads for you or \
+for me that door opens onto darkness marked \
+only by a trellis or the lid of a casket
+
+the door of the earth's womb opening \
+finally to accept us and with us the dirt \
+not to grow more strawberries for Falk
+
+but to pad his feet as he walks overhead \
+to visit someone he certainly cares about \
+but whose name is lost to posterity.
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: Exasperated
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 8
+    next:
+    - title: The Death Zone
+      link: death-zone
+    - title: Boy on the bus
+      link: boy_bus
+    prev:
+    - title: AMBER alert
+      link: amber-alert
+    - title: The Death Zone
+      link: death-zone
+...
+
+I didn't write this sestina yesterday. \
+It's the first time I fell behind in my task \
+and hopefully, the only time it will. \
+This means that today I must write two \
+sestinas. If I don't write them today, I \
+will have to write two later down the line.
+
+Although I feel I'm slogging through each line \
+I think I'm doing better every day, \
+though maybe this is wishful thinking: I \
+showed my friend my just-completed task \
+two days ago (my God, was it two \
+entire days? I've no idea what I'll
+
+do after thirty-nine days. I think I'll \
+feel like Inigo Montoya, who'd been in the line \
+of revenging for so long, he didn't know what to \
+do with the rest of his life), and he deigned \
+to be polite, but I could tell the task \
+was hard for him. He told me finally that I
+
+had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I \
+failed. So my question: when will \
+I be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task. \
+Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line \
+I'll finally figure it out. Maybe one more day \
+or another week will do it, or maybe I'll need two,
+
+or maybe it'll never happen. Maybe a sestina's too \
+involved, too much weaving of words too fine, and I \
+will never write a good one, even on my best day, \
+even if I employ all my skill and all my will. \
+I'm not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines, \
+that must be the problem, must be why this task
+
+is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks, \
+and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two, \
+and it's nothing but complaining lines \
+about how hard it is to be a person. I \
+am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will \
+soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.
+
+But I tasked myself with this, which may be the worst I \
+ever do to myself. I thought a poem NaNoWriMo would \
+be fun, would line my resume, give me something I could publish someday.
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+---
+title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: When you fall in love everyone looks the same.
+    link: i-think-its-you
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 15
+    next:
+    - title: 1. Initial conditions
+      link: initial-conditions
+    - title: Riptide of memory
+      link: riptide_memory
+    prev:
+    - title: Boy on the bus
+      link: boy_bus
+    - title: L'appel du vide
+      link: lappel-du-vide
+...
+
+I thought I saw you walking \
+to the bus stop but it was only \
+a raven. His croaks sounded nothing \
+like your footsteps (as they pound \
+down the hallway toward my bedroom) \
+his wings looked nothing like your \
+legs (running on the wrong side \
+of the road away from my house) \
+I think the one resemblance was the eyes
+
+But that's too easy \
+It's just that I was thinking \
+of you and a raven flew by \
+(maybe it was a crow)
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: 1. Initial conditions
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 11
+    next:
+    - title: 3. Love as God
+      link: love-as-god
+    - title: 2. Ouroboros of memory
+      link: ouroboros_memory
+    prev:
+    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+      link: i-think-its-you
+    - title: Last Bastion
+      link: last-bastion
+...
+
+There is a theory which states the Universe \
+if it began with the same initial conditions \
+( same gravity same strong weak nuclear force same \
+size and shape ) would unfold in exactly \
+the way it has : with the same planets orbiting suns \
+same people making same mistakes : like this morning
+
+( It's actually past two but I will call it morning ) \
+while turning on the shower : I as the Universe \
+intended ( although I was expecting the heat of suns ) \
+had the ice of inner space : those pre existing conditions \
+before the Big Bang : the shower was almost exactly \
+freezing for a split second : every day it's the same :
+
+I turn on the tap hop in pull the knob have the same \
+moment of utter panic then pain then a relaxing morning \
+shower where I spend between five to ten ( I'm not sure exactly ) \
+minutes : I have good thoughts : this poem about the Universe \
+for example : I had the idea while I was conditioning \
+my hair : it came to me like accidentally looking at the sun :
+
+the pain and the wonder that something as large as suns \
+could appear so small and yet so hot all at the same \
+time : so hot in the summer we require air conditioning \
+( although now in the winter it's cold in the morning ) \
+and I can't wait to hop in the shower that tiny universe \
+of water and steam and soap and body : that and only that exactly
+
+or rather exclusively ( it's hard to get the words exactly \
+right : the meanings bleed into each other like the sun's \
+shadows on pavement ) ready for me to dream another universe \
+into it on top of it again and again until they all look the same : \
+I can't tell whether it's my morning or the shower's morning \
+or where I put the conditioner or what the initial conditions
+
+could have been that decided I would misplace my conditioner \
+today : and why and how much planning was involved exactly \
+that would cause so far down the production line of this morning \
+\: me to wake up so long after the rising of the sun \
+\: me to stay inside all day even after showering to look at the same \
+computer screen : to give up the actual universe to the universe
+
+in there with its conditions : where the screen serves as sickly sun : \
+where there is apparently exactly what I need : no more : the same \
+three sites I visited this morning comprising my entire Universe
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: L'appel du vide
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: You can never go home again.
+    attrib: Thomas Wolfe
+    link: 'http://books.google.com/books?id=yybDMC0TRIwC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12#v=onepage&q&f=false'
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 14
+    next:
+    - title: Boy on the bus
+      link: boy_bus
+    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+      link: i-think-its-you
+    prev:
+    - title: Ouroboros of memory
+      link: ouroboros_memory
+    - title: 3. Love as God
+      link: love-as-god
+...
+
+# I. Walter
+
+Walter rides the bus into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life.
+That era in which the next time he goes under, to the fields of seaweed waving gently, the anemones slowly filtering seawater, it will most likely be for a death in the family.
+
+He is able to idly speculate on who it might be, and this surprises him.
+Not much does surprise him after these few months above the waves, because so many things did surprise him those first few months: the plants standing still, the quickness of the fluid these creatures walk in, the lack of pressure that still makes him feel so alone and cold---as if all of his life he had been in an embrace by the ocean, and now for some reason it's pulled away from him, and it doesn't love him anymore.
+
+His speculations lead him to picture his grandmother, small and frail and forgetful.
+He always assumed she'd be next, since last year when the other one died and Gina said,
+"I wonder who'll be next."
+She said what they'd both been thinking.
+
+Soon after that he'd come up to land, to the mountains of all places, the most land-like land, and started a job with an [accounting firm][].
+While it was challenging to adjust to the change in pressure and movement, to people staring at him on the bus, in the supermarket, at the job, him with his scales and fins and breathing machine, he'd always made a point to make the best out of a situation.
+The problem was that the best wasn't good enough.
+
+[accounting firm]: telemarketer.html
+
+# II. L'appel du vide
+
+And I'll get in my car and drive \
+and I'll want to keep driving \
+straight into the next state \
+or even the next country \
+or even even the ocean
+
+and go down deeper \
+keep exploring forever \
+find out what's down there \
+go to the Marianas trench \
+miss the air world and \
+come back up \
+itself a kind of unknown \
+the homecoming after
+
+What happened to the home I was?
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+title: Last bastion
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 10
+    next:
+    - title: AMBER alert
+      link: amber-alert
+    - title: 1. Initial conditions
+      link: initial-conditions
+    prev:
+    - title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
+      link: sixteenth-chapel.txt
+    - title: Boy on the bus
+      link: boy_bus
+...
+
+Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle \
+down the cold and darkened highways of the heart. \
+They are the last personality left. They are the meek \
+who inherited the heart, what was left of it. \
+Without food to cook in new or exciting ways \
+nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs \
+of the heart quietly waste away while staring \
+doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows \
+checking under the dusty produce shelves \
+for something they pray the rats haven't found yet.
+
+Years ago, the economy of the heart boomed \
+and there was food everywhere. Produce \
+piled high in pyramids of devotion, meat in \
+gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence, \
+dairy which ran like the mythical river toward \
+cereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumming \
+like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun \
+near a river where reeds sang in the wind \
+the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.
+
+No one knows when it all ended. No one can say \
+if it was the heart that dried up or the heart's supply. \
+Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer. \
+People began dying, not of starvation \
+but of a certain facial expression that could only \
+be described as desperation. Now \
+all that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastion \
+of a once mighty empire of the heart \
+are reduced to husks blown dry by wind.
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: 3. Love as God
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 13
+    next:
+    - title: Worse looking over
+      link: worse-looking-over
+    - title: L'appel du vide
+      link: lappel-du-vide
+    prev:
+    - title: 1. Initial conditions
+      link: initial-conditions
+    - title: 2. Ouroboros of memory
+      link: ouroboros_memory
+...
+
+God is love, they say, but there is \
+no god. Therefore, how can there be love? \
+And if there is no love, how can there be God? \
+There are things in life, I suppose, \
+that are simply unanswerable mysteries \
+of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.
+
+Maybe there are many loves, instead of one. \
+The difference between what isn't and what is \
+could merely be one of scope. The mystery \
+is how we speak only of one love -- \
+to act as though we know we are supposed \
+to love only one other, or that one other and God.
+
+But supposing that one other is God? \
+What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone, \
+supported by God only when He feels He is supposed \
+to support her? What kind of love is \
+this? I would argue in fact this isn't love, \
+this one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand mystery.
+
+How to define two loves as one is the mystery. \
+It's obvious to many there is a thing called God, \
+and just as obvious that there is one called love. \
+Maybe we fool ourselves, we who can't be alone; \
+maybe we don't know what either God or love is. \
+Maybe, and perhaps; but I for one propose
+
+that we as only humans are not supposed \
+to know or understand capital-L Life, that mystery. \
+Isn't it enough to know that God is  \
+love, and love is God,  \
+no matter which one \
+does or does not exist? What is life, if no love,
+
+if no God? Maybe this saying, "God is love," \
+is less a definition of God what what love is supposed \
+to be. Of these two terms, maybe the one \
+we should capitalize is Love, that great mystery \
+of chemistry and longing. Maybe "Love is god" \
+is a more fitting epigraph for what life is
+
+made of: Love, that most delicate, most misty \
+of all emotions, is supposed to be their god, \
+as the one that binds us, that was, that will be, that is.
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: The Moon is drowning
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 3
+    next:
+    - title: |
+        Something about all music being performances of *4'33"* in places
+        where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-443
+    - title: Worse looking over
+      link: worse-looking-over
+    prev:
+    - title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
+      link: poetry-time
+    - title: The Big Dipper
+      link: big-dipper
+...
+
+The moon is drowning the stars it pushes them \
+under into the darkness they cannot breathe \
+they are flailing the moon boasts to my shadow \
+how powerful is the moon how great its light
+
+My shadow nods and calls the moon father though \
+it acknowledges also the existence of others \
+headlights are like little moons father my shadow says \
+they pass like waves in a dark ocean
+
+Father moon becomes angry and threatens \
+I can maroon you shadow I can trap you in darkness \
+your strength comes from my own the little moons \
+are fleeting like foam on a darkened sea
+
+My shadow fears the night as it fears death \
+but it remembers the moon's strength is from another \
+my shadow wants the headlights like an ocean \
+might want the moon as a seducer as a lover
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: |
+    Something about all music being performances of _4'33"_
+    in places where other bands happen to be playing
+genre: verse
+
+dedication: |
+    [Randall](TODO-xkcd-comic)
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 18
+    next:
+    - title: Riptide of memory
+      link: riptide_memory
+    - title: About the author
+      link: about-the-author
+    prev:
+    - title: The Moon is drowning
+      link: moon-drowning
+    - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
+      link: sixteenth-chapel
+...
+
+Silence lies underneath us all in the same way \
+the Nile has a river underneath ten times as large \
+(although this is an urban legend, apparently).
+
+So underneath truth or legend, flowing by \
+the feel of their own silence, move the stars: \
+silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
+
+John Cage, I think, understood this: the way \
+that, in a silent room, one still hears the nerves \
+(although this is an urban legend, apparently),
+
+or the heart, which I find more easily \
+believable: there simply is no way that, by and large, \
+silence lies underneath us all in the same way.
+
+There must be different silences, because we \
+have different songs to drown them out, different gods \
+(although these are urban legends, apparently).
+
+But is not all sound one sound? You and I \
+are two faces to the same head, the same body. \
+Silence lies underneath us all in the same way--- \
+although this is an urban legend, apparently.
@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+---
+title: 2. Ouroboros of Memory
+genre: prose
+
+epigraph:
+    content: |
+        He used his body to remember
+        his body, but in the end could only
+        remember the string.
+    attrib: Jonathan Safran Foer
+    link: 'http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2315'
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 12
+    next:
+    - title: L'appel du vide
+      link: lappel-du-vide
+    - title: 3. Love as God
+      link: love-as-god
+    prev:
+    - title: Table of contents
+      link: table_contents
+    - title: 1. Initial Conditions
+      link: initial-conditions
+...
+
+[He said][] at the beginning, "It's like rolling yarn into a too-small ball.
+Sure, you can roll the memories around for a while, and maybe even use some of them.
+Eventually, though, you'll wind them all the way out and you'll be left with nothing but a small loop.
+You can tie this loop around your finger, and start wrapping your body, but this is an extension of the same problem.
+You'll turn into a mummy of memory.
+There'll be nothing left underneath but a dead body.
+
+"But what does it mean, _To remember the body with the body?_
+I imagine a creature made of memory, putting its feet in its mouth, turning into a ball.
+In this way, it could roll all around the landscape of its memory.
+I've tried explaining this to other people, but it doesn't make any sense to them.
+The task of eating one's feet is, to them, an unsolvable problem.
+They seem to forgotten that, as babies, they were able to make themselves into loops.
+
+"So I increase the count to two: two snakes eating each other's tales, forming a loop.
+In this way they are able to put two heads on one body.
+This doubles the number of memories, which really only exacerbates the problem.
+It's like trying to roll two different materials up into a ball.
+The people I tell this to don't understand this either, they say using two animals makes sense to them.
+They say there must be different types of memory.
+
+"I disagree with this theory of memory.
+I think there is, at bottom, only one type of anything, with subtypes grouped together along the edge of a loop.
+Color becomes a good metaphor: look how many of them!
+yet they are all consumed by the same part of the body.
+Maybe two different materials are still made of material, and maybe they can be rolled into a ball.
+Maybe there actually never was a problem.
+
+"Or maybe, and this is more likely, I need to restate the problem.
+I think it all boils down to the fact that I have a truly lousy memory.
+I've tried different mnemonic devices, like imagining each thing I need to remember being visited by a bouncing ball.
+I've tried trying string into finger-loops.
+I've even tried writing the things I need to remember on my body.
+If you asked me, 'Do any of these work,' I would have to answer, 'None of them.'
+
+"Sometimes in the morning I realize dumbly I've forgotten my words, all of them.
+They generally come back by around ten o'clock, but the frequency with which this is occurring is becoming a problem.
+I feel that my brain is being separated from my body.
+Is there a place in the universe for a misplaced memory?
+Does it eat its own tail and roll around the universe as it loops?
+Does it shrink down and become lost as a tiny ball?
+
+No matter what happens, eventually _I_ will become _them_ as I lose the last of my memory.
+I won't be able to solve the problem of my being, and my being will become my problem, in an eternal loop.
+I will roll my body into a prenatal ball.
+
+[He said]: joke.html
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: Something about the nature of poetry and time
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 5
+    next:
+    - title: The Moon is drowning
+      link: moon-drowning
+    - title: AMBER alert
+      link: amber-alert
+    prev:
+    - title: The Big Dipper
+      link: big-dipper
+    - title: Worse looking over
+      link: worse-looking-over
+...
+
+I'm writing this now because I have to. \
+Not in some "my soul yearns for this and \
+I can't help it" way, but in the way that this \
+moment is structured as such, that it is \
+crystallized this way, me writing this, and later \
+you reading it, now for you, later for me,
+
+and this tenuous connection mates me \
+and you forever, combined with each other, two \
+electrons momentarily entwined. Later, \
+when I'm dead or far too famous for you, and \
+you're in school, reading my words because it is \
+required reading, I want you to remember this
+
+connection we've always had, this \
+spider's thread hanging between you and me. \
+Which of us is the spider and which is \
+the fly still remains to be seen. To \
+eat, perchance to fly: all of that and \
+more. We can settle all of this later.
+
+Yes, it is you I'm thinking of in your later \
+time: you specifically, not another. This \
+is true for all _x_ such that _x_ > 0 and \
+_x_ is a real person, though it doesn't bother me \
+to write to a fictional figure or to \
+a figment, maybe, of my imagination. This is
+
+what you are right now, anyway, dear Reader, is \
+it not? I'm talking about my now, of course, not later, \
+which is your now. Later will be my now too, \
+and maybe I'm ultimately writing to a future part of this \
+self: you could very well be me. \
+In fact, you probably are me, some other version, and
+
+I am you in the past, or what you could've been, and \
+at the same time, this isn't true. Everything is, \
+and nothing isn't. The difference between "you" and "me" \
+is in name only. Maybe you'll get this later, \
+when you're older, when I'm older, when all of this \
+is something we'll look fondly back to,
+
+because I do hope to meet you, although much later, \
+and I hope your feeling is the same. All this \
+talk on me and you and you and me we'll keep between us two.
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: Riptide of memory
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 16
+    next:
+    - title: About the author
+      link: about-the-author
+    - title: The Sixteenth Chapel
+      link: sixteenth-chapel
+    prev:
+    - title: |
+        Something about all music being performances of 4'33"
+        in places where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-433
+    - title: I think it's you (but it's not)
+      link: i-think-its-you
+...
+
+Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.
+The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder
+than anywhere else I know.  It threatens to rip
+my body away, like an angel of death, to the stars.
+
+In Arizona, I thought I would forget the rain,
+forget its sound on a roof like a hard wind, forget
+its smell like a far away ocean. Luckily for me
+it rains here. Luckily because I forget too easily.
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+---
+title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
+genre: verse
+
+epigraph:
+    content: "Canadian High School!"
+    link: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk'
+
+dedication: Max
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 17
+    next:
+    - title: Last bastion
+      link: last-bastion
+    - title: |
+        Something about all music being performances of *4'33"*
+        in places where other bands happen to be playing
+      link: music-433
+    prev:
+    - title: Worse looking over
+      link: worse-looking-over
+    - title: Riptide of memory
+      link: riptide_memory
+...
+
+If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth \
+chapel, I'm not either. I admit he is my role \
+model. He's so current, so fresh and so new, \
+and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated. \
+Where is the love in those old paintings? All \
+I see is creation, judgment, and death---
+
+and I don't get the preoccupation with death. \
+I'm about life! Ever since my sixteenth \
+birthday, when me and my two sisters all \
+nearly died when the car I was driving rolled \
+into a creek. Even though I've forgotten the date, \
+I think it keeps me thinking on the new,
+
+something Biebs would be proud of if he knew. \
+I look at him, and see the opposite of death \
+in his eyes, his youthful smile: though someday \
+he may be a father, and later host a Sweet Sixteen \
+for his daughter (who I know he'll buy a Rolls), \
+death will never find him. Living will be all
+
+he'll ever do, because it will be all \
+he'll ever need to do. He is the eternal new, \
+the forever youth: this is the simple role \
+of every celebrity, to let us forget death. \
+Bieber didn't make a mistake on the Sistine \
+Chapel's name. He merely showed that someday
+
+all old names must go, that on some day \
+a name must die so that the thing, which is all \
+that matters, can stay as it was in the sixteenth \
+century: fresh, ostentatious, and brand new. \
+In a way, the name becomes a Christ, experiencing death \
+so the world doesn't have to. But I am wary of this role
+
+for a name. It seems a name gives meaning, rolls \
+the general idea together with the concrete, daily \
+toil of the mundane. Are not life and death \
+intertwined? Is not everything tied up all \
+with everything? I guess I'm saying the new \
+necessarily comes from the old, as every sixteen-
+
+year-old has a parent. Life rolls to death, and all \
+is tied together. Each day is born of night, and dies so new \
+morning can occur. Even the sixteenth chapel holds death.
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+title: Table of contents
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 1
+    next:
+    - title: Ouroboros of memory
+      link: ouroboros_memory
+    - title: The Big Dipper
+      link: big-dipper
+...
+
+--------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
+4. The look she gave me                 4. Half-hours in heaven are three times
+                                           that in hell
+
+5. Not out of anger                     5. Pay the toll, mister, or nothing can
+                                           get done
+
+6. A desire to understand               6. Misattributed
+
+7. Seven syllables amble                7. Disassociated
+
+8. To drink at the pond                 8. Advice from a cereal box
+
+9. Two fall in and drown                9. The challenges of a modern life
+
+10. Odd-numbered ponies                 10. Probability and the American Dream
+
+11. Buck and Whinny in the moonlight    11. Two friends throw dice
+
+12. To die tomorrow                     12. Fears of death
+
+13. To be everywhere                    13. The solipsist talks to God
+
+14. All at one time: my motto           14. A phone conversation following
+                                            receipt of an ill-timed love letter
+
+15. Of a perfect world                  15. Woody Allen at the horse races
+
+16. This morning the sun                16. Whether you say good morning or
+                                            good night
+
+17. Wandering through the window        17. A traveler waiting on the mountain
+
+18. Alights on my shoulder              18. The impenetrable object falls in
+                                            love
+
+                                        1. Liquid messenger
+
+                                        2. After a gate closes, dogs bark
+
+                                        3. Finding old men at dusk
+
+--------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+title: Worse looking over
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Stark Raving
+    css: stark
+    order: 4
+    next:
+    - title: 4. The Sixteenth Chapel
+      link: sixteenth-chapel
+    - title: 6. Something about the nature of poetry and time
+      link: poetry-time
+    prev:
+    - title: 3. Love as God
+      link: love-as-god
+    - title: The moon is drowning
+      link: moon-drowning
+...
+
+The radio is screaming the man \
+on the radio will not be quiet he is \
+pushed far into the background \
+while some NPR talkers murmur over \
+his screaming he lost something \
+very important. He says it over \
+and over but they do not listen \
+they think of their children at home \
+lying in bed dreaming sweet \
+childhood one of them is staying over \
+at a friend’s house they are staying \
+up late they never want it to be over \
+not like the man. His life on the radio \
+will be the only one he ever has \
+his life it is wasted he’s being spoken over \
+such pain is in his voice. I wish you \
+could hear it. It’s something never over. \
+Suffering everywhere always and over it \
+the same serene murmur of the comfortable \
+distracted or worse looking over \
+the shoulder and quietly looking away.