pulse without blood

Re-reading one of my favorite books by artificial candlelight and gamelan, I've lost track of the age of time. This copy has sputtered in the sun so long, the pages are framed in yellow, and the cover is peeling. I picked up a copy for Dan-in-L.A. at Powell's on Sunday and will be mailing him a little parcel this week. His copy looks (appropriately) virginal compared to mine, but I couldn't deprive myself of the marginalia and the perfectly ruled underlining I thought made a difference in college.

Mohawk prefers candles and is covering his eyes with his paw. Walter generally swims in darkness, between knees, away.

This morning arrived with bleak hedge-frost, the sun a brittle scalpel. I click into place. I'd rather be in the Outer, rather than "in transit." #4 bus, my blood-stream to work and back when it isn't fair-weather. I listen to one album, obsessively, for about a week. "Remain in Light" hasn't grown old yet.

Cold weather fills me with moss, I don't know the difference between myself and water.

We never made it to the Eastern Oregon canyons, with another other perhaps. An invisible blot on a map that has chosen to furl inward again, six months to the day. A sleeping scroll.

Camping is an immense life-form in which many small consciousnesses are working away like roots. Captive themselves. Taking on its color.

I want to bleach myself in it. A stepping on, around, upon many tendrils.

I didn't seem to remember our half-asleep conversations. Handbells. Change-ringing. Once Matt said he felt like a cone, triangulated. A tip for a brain, his legs expanse slants. Or perhaps it was the other way around, inverted, more like a horn?

He once said, I would be honored to be your, if but fleeting, canvas. I wanted to use his back as a pillow book.

I, however, usually feel like a bell, paunched shoulders, lower heat. A swirling clip circumnavigating the center, my imprint leaving nothing behind but a scattered vapor.