Fair Game

Something cohesive and plausible. I was up most of the night, chasing an elusive thought, and when B came over at, like, ten in the morning, I'd just gone to bed. He always lets out a "Hey Uh" when he's a hundred feet from the back door, to tell me it's him, as I do when I visit him. It's what you do, in deep country, to keep from getting shot. It doesn't startle him at all, that I'd just gone to bed, he knew I'd been writing or reading or musing over some contradiction, because I looked like shit, wearing silly house-slippers and my hair standing straight up, like I'd just received electro-shock therapy. The rules change. It's not one thing or another. Despite what I said, there might be a third way. Odd numbers are always awkward. You're confused about where to focus your attention. It's hard to light a match when your hand is shaking. I don't have to get my act together, because I live alone and I don't have to explain my actions. The fact that I sometimes sit on the back stoop and shoot marbles, with a slingshot, at a particular tree. Grammar is the train, syntax is the track, just as B had said. I'm merely a passenger, third-class, below the radar, stowed away in the hold. Ten years without a TV or watching a single movie, I don't know who anyone is; I might recognize a particular arch of eyebrow, but I can't place a name. When it comes to modern culture I'm as dumb as a rock. Nonetheless, I put a kettle of water on the cookstove hours ago, because I wanted to shave, and it's still hot. I might as well shave.