“I used to follow the odd jobs truck down the street when I’d see it. My friends did too, we all went together. We’d run, skate, or bicycle as fast as we could to keep up. Usually it would pass us easily but we could see it far enough ahead that we could catch up once he stopped. There weren’t many hills in our town, at least not in the neighbourhood where most of us lived, nor in the downtown. It wasn’t the easiest, anyway.

On summer days, sometimes you could see something, like the blank space of the world was bending slowly up from the ground. We’d be so hot, not wanting to even touch the ground on our knees (the way children often do to examine an insect). You knew that it would be a lousy bit of luck if someone pushed you into one of those overgrown juniper hedges—somehow the scratching and their smell goes hand-in-hand with those hot days. If you’ve ever smelled a hot juniper you’ll know what I mean. I’ll always think of juniper as an unbearable torture for the flesh of a sunstruck day.

One day, we’re all chasing the odd jobs truck. We assume someone needed a fence fixed or something like that. His truck stops and he gets out, he heads into the house—doesn’t ring the doorbell or even knock. We were surprised because it wasn’t his house. It was Mrs. Kary’s. She was Junk’s mom but Junk wasn’t with us that day. Usually he’d be chasing the odd jobs truck just like the rest of us. Anyway, we waited for a few minutes. Since the odd jobs man didn’t come back to his truck quickly, we assumed he had a more difficult job on-hand.

We were curious enough to tunnel through the juniper in front of the Karys’ house. We managed, under cover of prickly juniper, to close the gap between the road and the side window of the house. After getting close enough, we craned our necks to peer inside. We saw the odd jobs man standing in front of Mrs. Kary and Junk. Mrs. Kary seemed to be holding Junk. Junk had what looked like a big hole in his right cheek. It wasn’t bleeding or anything like that, it was just a clean hole.

The odd jobs man licked Junk’s right cheek. He kept licking, over and over, while we watched. After a quarter hour or so, the odd jobs man moved aside and we all saw, Junk didn’t have that hole anymore. His cheek looked normal. Junk, trembling, looked like he kept silent. The odd jobs man seemed satisfied with his work, winked at Mrs. Kary, and stepped around Junk to her direction. She kept still. Methodically, the odd jobs man sat down at the piano and started playing. We couldn’t hear but Junk smiled, so it must’ve been good. Then he picked up his box of tools and left the Kary house.”

I keep a small, spiral-bound notepad in my left back pocket. No, I’ve kept many. I’ve done this for years. Looking back, I’m not always sure what I’ve written or why, but I save them. A collection of a few of the pages:

• 23 July 1998 - First words with the Fisher Space Pen. Do we need a new scientific method? This Saturday, Mary’s Birthday.
• 25 July 1998 - Find out the pronunciation of “Bogota”
• 8 August 1998 - Bitten by an unidentified bug. Moments later saw extremely large roach-like bug in the men’s restroom. Never seen such a thing. It played the disappearing act only moments after being sighted. The restroom was otherwise empty. Sounds: chairs scratching the floor. CDs: new Squirrel Nut Zippers.
• September 1998 - 25 divided by 8. 4 3 3 4 3 3 1 4
• 21 October 1998 - My eyes are dying.
• 29 October 1998 - Remember always that not every area of M.O.N. must be concerned with that ultimate universal nirvanic reality. It will be necessary even for parts to lead askew. Just as a good fictional work may have characters one abhors or a painting may be of ugly things but brilliant nonetheless. Sunday = Derek & Mike –> vision @ tilden w/assistance.
• 18 November 1998 - Look up the poet, Wallace Stevens
• 15 December 1998 - Why can’t she just say she doesn’t like him?
• 20 December 1998 - Intuition - Bernard Lonergan > insight
• 8 January 1999 - Nine slender eggplants or two small globe (2 lbs), parsley
• 12 January 1999 - Roberto Matta, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington
• 19 March 1999 - The failure of physics is answered by being. I need to find new communication ways–people don’t get it.
• 28 April 1999 - Protest against Occidental Oil, drilling in Uwa territory
• 21 August 1999 - The stage would have one row of three or four people each playing a theremin (sometimes synchronized–sometimes solo improvising) Behind would be a row of four to six drummers–all different sorts of tribal drums.
• 4 October 1999 - To Head Home

On the table top, and in the barely dark, dry and not imposing any urgency.

I looked at marbles today. Swirling lake reflections of spirals, cat eyes, and occasional small bubbles. A white background of no consequence, pushing through the imperfect glass. One marble chipped here or there. You touch such things by rubbing a thumb against the angular flat outsider of a surface. Leibniz, all making possibilities, as the glass clack gulps in unique bounce vibrations, echo through a human chest (following fingers that pushed the sparkling marbles against one another).

Not so much the marbles, white, and glass, but rather the ever more delicate sponginess of a bio corpus dei something or other, natively said. On the table top (as though they could have been marbles in a different contrast) against a neglectfully polished black background. Light twining like the intention of thought escaping beyond one’s skull. You touch such things by this intention but there is no more escape than there is skull. Patience on the tongue lasts for millennia; sometimes I look at objects without intention, though am content, for as long.

Addendum: Just noticed, in writing this last night (it came in the midst of writing something else, where it just didn’t fit) a phrase from the other writing seems to have crept into this. Why does that feel reassuring?

Four sets of photos, sketches, and text accomplished in four different Montreal parks (fifteen minutes each). First day of Spring.

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On the night before, I slept very little to ensure I’d sleep the next night. That next night held a flight–an entire night mixed up with invisible hands batting our poor vessel about the sky.

Piano sound carries itself
winking uponaround three flights of interwoven logs:
    Trees petrified in
    preservation of paint and
    stoic service.
It floats into round-edged crevices,
fitting log upon, in log.

By morning I’d managed to clock, at most, two hours of catnaps. Crossing over an arc of land, through turbulence that mimicked some other arc of land (as though clouds mold themselves into, on such topology). I’d been packaged and unpacked in regular patterns.

Wooden beams cross more than the ceiling
across ceiling and walls and floors.

We all walked through the same long glass hallway and felt the sharp bite of cold between plane and hall. Came to some curves and went down stairs. I know the place was marked well or I wouldn’t have found my way.

Logs interconnect.
Stacked and crossed,
angling into the ceiling.
Through gaps in wooden railings:
				seeing Couples
play cards, chess, other games, laughing sometimes.

I think they might’ve needed a passport though. Pass port. A flight as port? Port to something. The customs room maybe. Was this a customs room, human port?

Families sit,
children exploring a hexagonal circumference
of fireplace,
roars, placidly.
They re-meet at intervals.
Toward the ceiling, heat climbs
in lax pursuit of piano notes.

This flesh and blood foreshadow–a special trick, and I started to guess about, and my limited memory of spoken French. It was my turn to pretend I’d woken from a full night’s sleep.

A man sits on a striped chair,
(red shirt rumpled in relaxation).
He'd have grand children.
His white-haired wife walks to the chair
		by his side and sits.
The two gesture to each other
before opening books--
dice tumble. Hockey sticks, skis, people pass through.

Quiet corners lack people. Sitting with a dim lamp to my left, It yellows the green marble table and reflects my white coffee cup. Nice white–best showing of coffee bean brown, barely separable from enfolding beams of wood–note.

Observing
is outside time
though the reflection
of woods
cradles all of us
before passage.

When he was a boy, he’d accompany one parent or another to banks, convenience stores, hardware stores, places queueing people to exchange money for whatever it was worth. He’d stand by the counter waiting to be noticed. Sensible, he waited in line, not interrupting, rocking from heel to toe to heel. Sometimes grownups pushed ahead and he continued to wait. Clerks didn’t know he was waiting, a part of the sequence.

Sometimes when his mother was paying, he’d stand on his toes hoping to catch a glimpse of the person at the other side of the counter. He’d see only the underside of the counter (its gallery of cherry, grape, and wintergreen-coloured stalactites) or the edge of its platform (fractured formica edges). He’d jump to get a better look but his mother eventually nixed that. Sometimes his father would say “my son would like…” but that didn’t help because he still couldn’t see the person. Even when they spoke to him, they talked to the top of his head.

He remembered when his eye-level passed the top of the counter. He liked the ball-bearing chains, which attached pens to the countertop–metallic snakes that forgot about friction. After being told not to play with them, he pushed their beads silently against his fingertips to feel roundness. Even once he could see across the countertop, he still had to reach, awkwardly twisting his shoulder to place money onto the platform. Finally, paying required concentration (the surety of adult action takes time).

When he was older and taller, he placed his hands comfortably on the countertop and spoke. The clerk noticed him out of duty rather than curiousity. With the countertop below his hands, he made eye contact, smiling with the courtesy of a small but genuine gratitude. She returned the smile while handing him the receipt for his groceries.

The Phy-d’eau wiki is resurrected as the Idea Toy Wiki. A wiki devoted to creating, collecting, publishing, taxonomizing, and discussing thinking organisms as well as their relatives: thought experiments, koans, tantalizing paradoxes, unsolvable logic mechanisms, etc. The goal is to develop a collection of work written just to provoke thinking without a defined end, thinking for the sake of thinking, insight, and awareness.

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A cold polished stone
lolls on my tongue.
I curl the edges,
rolling the stone to the center
cradling it in a
sway of undulating
taste buds.

My tongue spoons
this sip of scotch,
   rolling it
   like a flaming
   dollop of viscous honey,
down my throat--
	yellow and round
	an invisible note
	of buoyant Bosch.

One morning, driving along the river, outside my neighbourhood, I witnessed the rapid welcome of a brilliant, melancholy, antique cloud. It descended at an angle from the unlimited above, with its measure of a western direction. I wanted to stop. At 7:00 in the morning with no temperature, few people appear on the street. A homeless man, waiting for warm coffee forgot about warmth and stood to face the cloud. People steamed from doorways of vapour and pointed their heads to the sky–all looking at this visiting cloud. I wanted to stop. Its ambiguous form coiled in renaissance detail. In furiously cracking oils, it dripped controlled goose feather greys and fox browns inward. But the fury acted upon itself only for form and not malice. People watched fairy tales tumble to saturated rooftops. Street stones lightened their press toward Earth. The cloud hovered toward a sheet of sun that pushed the opposing flat expanse of concrete nimbostratus, which would swallow the awe. I wanted to stop but it was gone and I continued slowly.

• My wife is a professional at human emotions.
• Humans believe that which other humans tell them.
• James quoted Smith, saying a door in the hall lost its hinge pin.
• Smith agreed with himself while historically throwing a hinge to roving garbage collectors.
• If streets roam, their participants stray.
• 1906 infamously smoulders on the pages of records of hooligans and other street scoundrels.
• Because Earth requires the blankets of a thousand winter elephants, it ciao-ed to Atlas.
• Piano keys evaporate
• Beasts too, they finished evaporating mostly in 1906, but entirely, after halls were erected.
• The allowance of blanket beings has improved.
• Professionals agree that improvement used to be happier.

In mad flits, sobered strain above calm
Lepidoptera flew to avoid his enbalm.
He’d escape one true perish
Some deer devils’ ripe anguish,
But through circuits they’d track with aplomb.

Neither young nor old,
  as Hispanic melodies reverberate
from a temporary sunday's
Colombie in the park,
    A man and woman
South heading a little way. arms
Full of boxes (two each)
filled with
thick glass Clicks,
  in lock step with
their side-by-side gait.

(Black pansies and rose begonias
rustle near my toes,
using their surrounding breath fronds
to            intermittantly                tickle.)

The couple, southmore bynow quiteoutofvision,
slowly like—succoring our high humidex noon—
presuming they'll reach the
   the dépanneur's bottle
   redemption.

(sipping a bottle of cold.
licking Evaporation from my upper
lip.

half hour passed, in between the
flaps of Paper extending from a spine-in-hand
and words and
 Foreign lives in my Livre.
there exists this extension of substance
but the lives in the extension,
while not extended
touch me in their philosophy.)

Hearing footsteps I look
from a flap page, to the
sidewalk, the man and woman returning—northerly now.
Sharing one green glass mineral Gazeuse
and a blue glace and
a pink glace artificicle
each, which
they suck from plastic.

Their short walk, having
Exchanged remnants Of
  a Young middlelderly's age's right of passage,
  Folly, obtuse and slippery liquid Judgement,
For simple sugar colours
combustion engine of early youth. Shining, melting
popsicles, which wink in
the 33°C embrace.

cafes fall in love meeting the rapids buried
in statues of their river

A neighbor's blue and white flag almost flutters
nearly dancing over the man and woman
as they
disappear, (doubtless from the extension of I).