Ink is bleeding a Rorschach image onto the page where text should be. (Why should there be anything? This is something. At least there is this.)

handmade marks meander, he shifts his eyes to old light and breathes, as is his habit, borrowed air stale since Socrates, warm as flatulence. At least there is air.

The eyes in his skull close, as is their habit. Darkness closes the cluttered earth, its supermarket bounty.

Outside, it’s as brutal. The heat has turned the tops of the fern dry, water staunched. Crisp and dead. But at least he is still here, here he is being … , how shall we say this? He is entering the stasis of existence. The inkblot. The stain. He repeats these words:

I am being, … being.

Iamb bean.

Eye yam bean.

Why yam bean?

And so it goes, on and on and on

anon.

Meanwhile, it is always mean while, outside there is now a clear full moon lit night and you can hear the crickets but not the continent rip away beneath your feet. They have always been doing that. The continents. The crickets pulse so loudly you feel their sound inside you and continents move apart so slowly you don’t notice till you look back and nothing has changed for so long it seems that you are an eighty year old dream in the head of a seven year old kid falling asleep on his grandfather’s lap that smells of Old Spice and chicken pie. At least there are memories.

Memory is the residue of being. We call its residence, Self. Like a shelf for the soul. A sole shelf. A shelf. Remembering is sad theatre. Theatre performed by one for ghosts, but its got soul. He wrestles his memories. They become stronger, become demons,make him a stranger to himself. At least he has himself. We doubt, and so we become. (That seems to be the way it happens) What we become is the mystery. Maybe the mystery is only a word to describe that point of surrender. Maybe we have always been that which we become. Becoming is a stripping away. Doubt does that. Life too. You can sit in one place and life will find you and strip you to the bone.

Dubito ergo sum.

That is it. I am in that.

That I am, is being. That I feel, is being. That I think, is this being applauding on and on, anon.

At least there is that.

But what is it? I may as well breathe.