the windows and his folks at this moment standing somewhere on the observation deck of the empire state building hundreds of stories up in the clouds and light and how perfect that is to me how the whole world is still turning and somewhere itâs raining and somewhere itâs snowing and somewhere forest fires rage and somewhere else something moves beneath dark waters and somewhere blood appears in the hallway of the home of some old couple who arenât bleeding and somewhere someone else spontaneously self-combusts and somehow all the mysteries of this world as I know it offer me comfort and I donât know beans about heaven and hell and somehow all that stuff is no longer an issue and at the moment Iâm a sixteen-foot-tall five-hundred-and-forty-eight-pound man inside this six-foot body and all I can feel is the pressure all I can feel is the pressure and the need for release.
LIVING CLOSE TO THE KNIVES
Iâm sitting in his hospital room so high in the upper reaches of the building that when I walk the halls or sit in the room or wander to the waiting room to have a cigarette, itâs the gradual turn of earth outside the windows, the distant plains filled with buildings that have a look of fiction because from this perspective they flatten out against one another into the distance until there are thousands of windows (each one containing at least one human being that shows no sign of life) looking like small models of a train set against postcard-perfect reproductions of late winter skies and sunsets; the yellowing of sparse clouds and miniature water tanks. Leaning against the glass of the window of his room I see dizzily down into the street and wonder what it is to fall such distances. Iâm afraid heâs really dying. When we brought him in here it was just for some routine tests because he wasnât pissing for days and the slightest movement of an arm or leg brought nausea. He was expected to stay for only two or three days; itâs been a week now and he barely opens his eyes for more than a few seconds. I came into the room this morning, the door swinging open to pale light and that steady figure outlining the sheets. His breath was coming in rapid-fire bursts like a machine gun. I turn from the silence and the window and look at him and an iris appears beneath one half-lifted eyelid and its strength bores right through me. I turn away almost embarrassed having as much life in me as he hasnât. The iris was the size of the room; it dwarfed the winter light filling the streets outside the window; it radiated across the heavy clouds with fifty thousand windows reflecting the blue of sky through it.
Whales can descend to a depth of five thousand feet where they can and must sustain a pressure of one hundred and forty tons on every square foot of their bodies.
He seemed to wake for a moment; he drifted soundlessly for a while, then asked me in sounds that took five minutes to translate to help him into the nearby bathroom so he could shit or something. I manipulated the machinery in the structure of the bed so that his upper body rose toward me and his legs sank away. I placed my hands beneath his back, it was hot and sweaty, and I pulled him into a sitting position, took one paralyzed leg after the other pulling them over the side of the bed. Then I realized he was going nowhere. He was limp and his eyes were closed and his mouth against my arm breathing wet sounds. I felt my body thrumming with the sounds of vessels of blood and muscles contracting the sounds of aging and of disintegrationâthe sound of something made ridiculous with languageâthe sense of loving and the sense of fear. I looked into his face: the irises expanding and filling the room, the curtains of eyelids shutting down over them to lift again and again. I tried to explain that he was too weak to make the trip three feet away to the bathroom. I was suddenly scared and embarrassed again. âIâm
LIVING CLOSE TO THE KNIVES
Iâm sitting in his hospital room so high in the upper reaches of the building that when I walk the halls or sit in the room or wander to the waiting room to have a cigarette, itâs the gradual turn of earth outside the windows, the distant plains filled with buildings that have a look of fiction because from this perspective they flatten out against one another into the distance until there are thousands of windows (each one containing at least one human being that shows no sign of life) looking like small models of a train set against postcard-perfect reproductions of late winter skies and sunsets; the yellowing of sparse clouds and miniature water tanks. Leaning against the glass of the window of his room I see dizzily down into the street and wonder what it is to fall such distances. Iâm afraid heâs really dying. When we brought him in here it was just for some routine tests because he wasnât pissing for days and the slightest movement of an arm or leg brought nausea. He was expected to stay for only two or three days; itâs been a week now and he barely opens his eyes for more than a few seconds. I came into the room this morning, the door swinging open to pale light and that steady figure outlining the sheets. His breath was coming in rapid-fire bursts like a machine gun. I turn from the silence and the window and look at him and an iris appears beneath one half-lifted eyelid and its strength bores right through me. I turn away almost embarrassed having as much life in me as he hasnât. The iris was the size of the room; it dwarfed the winter light filling the streets outside the window; it radiated across the heavy clouds with fifty thousand windows reflecting the blue of sky through it.
Whales can descend to a depth of five thousand feet where they can and must sustain a pressure of one hundred and forty tons on every square foot of their bodies.
He seemed to wake for a moment; he drifted soundlessly for a while, then asked me in sounds that took five minutes to translate to help him into the nearby bathroom so he could shit or something. I manipulated the machinery in the structure of the bed so that his upper body rose toward me and his legs sank away. I placed my hands beneath his back, it was hot and sweaty, and I pulled him into a sitting position, took one paralyzed leg after the other pulling them over the side of the bed. Then I realized he was going nowhere. He was limp and his eyes were closed and his mouth against my arm breathing wet sounds. I felt my body thrumming with the sounds of vessels of blood and muscles contracting the sounds of aging and of disintegrationâthe sound of something made ridiculous with languageâthe sense of loving and the sense of fear. I looked into his face: the irises expanding and filling the room, the curtains of eyelids shutting down over them to lift again and again. I tried to explain that he was too weak to make the trip three feet away to the bathroom. I was suddenly scared and embarrassed again. âIâm
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