politician, the listener put in against his friend’s thoughts: “Afghan, Iraqi—” (Indonesia Colombia Bosnia, the listener put in, hearing some new trouble looking for words from years ago almost, this architect originally)—“superadobe would work better for godsake, Sam, local-earth with barbed wire for mortar.” These grain-storage bags of hemp they recycled as tents, the Jap firm—if conditions changed you could add on a little four-foot wing—post-explosion, post-quake, post-flood, post-contamination, post-epidemic, post- words , post—The correspondent would remember after “X” was gone—but who’s this “ we ” that could “do better”? the correspondent wanted to know—only kidding—leaving the next morning for China a few days ahead of Xides. Only to get thrown back at him by his old friend strangely exercised, “Where’s this X stuff coming from, Sam?”
“Un known ,” was the reply—Xides an intriguing unknown in the equation of our future together, the correspondent had written before and would again, moved by his old friend who, when asked about “the little terrorist” that acupuncturist “of yours”—had said the scale was getting to him. The scale? From inside. Ah. “My own.” Large?
And small.
X would mesh the fingers of one hand through those of the other, edgy, maybe just that everything you do eventually gets torn down, hearing lately coming back from the tactical jungle civil dreams of his own on urban circulation picked up only to be implemented by military listeners, that is to draw blood yet in terms of economy and political stability maybe improving in fact his original thoughts on horizontal stretch. How motion might, decentralized, shift the “syntax” of a city, this new breed had it, improvise access flows to open insurgents to penetration where even state-of-the-art defenses against nuclear ends are “architecture” nowadays, perhaps even the contemplation of de-spare-parted sewage plants, depowered to leave sewage pools in the streets and river levels low.
Neighborhood renewal where it’s the neighbors that get replaced. And who were the insurgents? Imam followers such as mutah believers in temporary marriage? Other Muslims who condemn festival dramas and art depicting humans? Suicide strategists or self-anointed Gospel free-enterprisers who knew the drill? He explained magnetic water as a material to the correspondent who confessed that “acu”puncture always suggested “aqua” to him though this was incorrect; but it told Xides that man to man the correspondent was thinking about what went on at those sessions.
His eyes shut to hear her steps. Did he almost place that old Sam-sung TV? A thing on the move in the other room as if it were near the ladder in this room, he thought, seeing double, keener then than an instrument an unholy scent of cut orange came with her hand and a faint rinse of detergent. She asked how he’d been. As if it were longer than this past Tuesday.
Did he want to take off his watch, was an order, not a question. How was the pain in the small of the back and did he feel it ever in his belly? They needed to talk. It was her breath he smelt orange on too.
Taking his watch, Any fever? Why did she ask, needling his ear now? She thought she’d seen a slight swelling in his right ankle last time.
Her nostrils, her tongue tip concentrating upon her upper lip, her color looking back at him so close, he put his fingers up to her cheek for a second (unprofessional of him): What were The Yellow Pages doing propping open the door? he wondered. “And a piece of newspaper keeping the place,” was all she said, seeming to agree. The magazine, the ladder, her dresser drawer out, the daybed pillows not put back he didn’t mention.
He reminded her he would be going away in a week. “Voyager,” she said.
And he would have to temporarily stop treatment but would take the moxa with him.
Back where it came from, she said.
He might
“Un known ,” was the reply—Xides an intriguing unknown in the equation of our future together, the correspondent had written before and would again, moved by his old friend who, when asked about “the little terrorist” that acupuncturist “of yours”—had said the scale was getting to him. The scale? From inside. Ah. “My own.” Large?
And small.
X would mesh the fingers of one hand through those of the other, edgy, maybe just that everything you do eventually gets torn down, hearing lately coming back from the tactical jungle civil dreams of his own on urban circulation picked up only to be implemented by military listeners, that is to draw blood yet in terms of economy and political stability maybe improving in fact his original thoughts on horizontal stretch. How motion might, decentralized, shift the “syntax” of a city, this new breed had it, improvise access flows to open insurgents to penetration where even state-of-the-art defenses against nuclear ends are “architecture” nowadays, perhaps even the contemplation of de-spare-parted sewage plants, depowered to leave sewage pools in the streets and river levels low.
Neighborhood renewal where it’s the neighbors that get replaced. And who were the insurgents? Imam followers such as mutah believers in temporary marriage? Other Muslims who condemn festival dramas and art depicting humans? Suicide strategists or self-anointed Gospel free-enterprisers who knew the drill? He explained magnetic water as a material to the correspondent who confessed that “acu”puncture always suggested “aqua” to him though this was incorrect; but it told Xides that man to man the correspondent was thinking about what went on at those sessions.
His eyes shut to hear her steps. Did he almost place that old Sam-sung TV? A thing on the move in the other room as if it were near the ladder in this room, he thought, seeing double, keener then than an instrument an unholy scent of cut orange came with her hand and a faint rinse of detergent. She asked how he’d been. As if it were longer than this past Tuesday.
Did he want to take off his watch, was an order, not a question. How was the pain in the small of the back and did he feel it ever in his belly? They needed to talk. It was her breath he smelt orange on too.
Taking his watch, Any fever? Why did she ask, needling his ear now? She thought she’d seen a slight swelling in his right ankle last time.
Her nostrils, her tongue tip concentrating upon her upper lip, her color looking back at him so close, he put his fingers up to her cheek for a second (unprofessional of him): What were The Yellow Pages doing propping open the door? he wondered. “And a piece of newspaper keeping the place,” was all she said, seeming to agree. The magazine, the ladder, her dresser drawer out, the daybed pillows not put back he didn’t mention.
He reminded her he would be going away in a week. “Voyager,” she said.
And he would have to temporarily stop treatment but would take the moxa with him.
Back where it came from, she said.
He might
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