Lanvin says it's ok.

"It's ok to have things going right in your life."

"Is it really?"

"It's designed that way, you know?"

"OK."

"Why don't you stop worrying about tomorrow, what's already happened. Everything is going to be perfect."

"I didn't say anything."

"I know you didn't."

"I'm just saying it is ok to accept happiness."

"OK."

"You can accept it."

"Right."

"It's yours. It belongs to you and it is all there really is."

Slowie hates his walk.

"I don't like the way he walks. His walk is terrible."

"Of course."

"He doesn't pay attention."

"What?"

"He doesn't pay attention. He swings his arms, he trudges. It's laziness. He lacks concentration."

"You mean his walking?"

"His walking is everything. It is my window into his ass. He is going to live in other peoples business because of that fuckin' walk and not his own. Can't you see that? Are you listening? You are so far away from home with a walk like that."

"You don't want anybody to be home."

"I do. I need people to be home at this point. I'm not looking to marry anyone, but they have to be home."

"They don't have to stay there?"

"At moments they can go out on their porch."

"You don't care."

"I care."

"You sure?"

"I can't stand his walk.

"OK."

"It is rude and haphazard."

"OK."

"It scares me to death."

Can you handle peace?

Do you want to understand or do you want peace?

William tells himself.

"Well."

"What?"

"Everything outside of this is connected to fear. It is connected to the same outlet."

"Right."

"Right here is OK."

"What?"

"No need to itemize. No.....need to catalog."

"OK."

"It should be treated the same."

"You tell yourself."

"I tell myself."

William needs a moving truck and some peace.

"I need to listen and not panic, you know? I just can't panic."

"Right."

"And listen intently."

"Right."

"You know?"

"I know."

"I'm nervous about it. I think I'm afraid--really, you know? A little. I have been strangled with bouts of hysteria just trying to calm down--stay calm. You know? Relax and listen.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Are you trying to calm down?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know."

"I have to shut this whole system down. I am trying to fire everybody that's in my head, because I can't hear."

"What?"

"It has been a fuckin' circus in there. Don't you feel the same way? I mean I can not continue to subscribe to this existence the way it is. You know? This existence is fucking screw up, it is a calamity. Don't you see that? There are no answers coming from it. I at least realize that now. I have to quiet my head and listen. I have to fire everyone in my mind and then wait. I have a million square feet in there and it is filled to the rafters with your problems and how I hate my boss, and should I walk the fucking dog, or will I be destitute this month, and can I eat burritos after eleven pm."

"Yeah that isn't a good."

"What?"

"Burritos."

"I don't want to panic anymore. I'm tired."

"I can understand that."

"I just want empty it all out and have delivered the only experiences my head needs."

"It won't make you interesting..."

"To people like you, no. But I will find another empty house bastard."

"What is it going to do?"

"A empty head?

"Yeah?"

"Like I said things will be delivered. There will be furniture in this mug. The shit will be quite minimal, orderly. Those looking will understand me better. I will utter complete sentences. I will stay focus and attentive while saying paragraphs that makes sense. I will start making sense. I will be happier, I'm sure. Be patient. I will help you figure out how fucked up you are, and untangle your ass from some stuff."

"I like my stuff."

"I know you do."

"My house filled to the rafters."

"Yes. You can't even get in there. You can't find a seat."

"Yeah."

"I can't see you and you can't see yourself."

You are a stranger here

i am tired of finding the road back
i am tired of disentegrating
i am tired

Slowie wants it back.

"For once I don't want this guy to leave."

"OK."

"Yes I understand what I've told you. I understand--clearly what my method of operation is."

"I know it by heart."

"I am paralyzed by this."

"You?"

"Me. It's interesting isn't? It is interesting how strangers can say things to you that is the most vulgar you have ever heard and you don't give a fuck, you laugh."

"I don't laugh."

"But someone who you thought cared about you--barely, maybe even used your toothbrush-- once, can say lesser things that captures all of the air in your lungs, makes your nose bleed, and then leaves you in the fetal position on the bathroom floor."

"Do I want to know this?"

"He said it was over."

"Did you even have an 'it' you seem to have an understanding that it was never going to be an 'it'. "   

"It was something that was now over. That is what matters to me."

"What does this mean?"

"I know I was a wreck this year. I worked like crazy. I ate less. I slept less. I took the whips rather than delivered them. I hated myself this year and had some sort of breakdown to be honest."

"No."

"Yes. He tried to fuck me, spent Friday drinking all of my Champagne ate all my Chinese food and set everything we own together on fire in the living room."

"You want him back?"

"I want him back."

"What are you going to do differently?"

"I don't know. He said mean things to me."

"And pushed you against the monkey bars."

"Listen, I realize I have been hard on him."

"You can be! And its OK to want more than cigarette burns on your back."

"I don't do that anymore."

"You need his support. You need support, but I understand that your breakdown scared him."

"What does it have to do with him?"

"It revealed too much of himself. He ran not because of you, but because of your state, He didn't sign up for that shit. It scared him into thinking about his own misgivings."

"What guy says misgivings?"

"This motherfucka' isn't built to support you, Slowie. "

"I don't need it."

"You need it. Even if it is from some bastard you're having sex with. That's the Slowie I don't know."

"I don't need it."

"You need it. He disparaged the shit out of you because you revealed him to himself. He wasn't built for that, but it is OK to have a breakdown. It is also OK to have someone you are sleeping with help you through it. You need to be in a relationship that protects your mind-- fuck everything else."

"I don't like you."

"I know."

"I want to go back."

"What?"

"I want to go back to not feeling. I want to go back to being a guy. Keeping love and compassion in my silk purse on the floor in the hall."


"You can't now."

"You can shut your face."

William wants to try something else.

"I don't want to die, but I'm chokin' here."

"On the food?"

"I have no other choice but to start trusting myself."

"I don't understand."

"There are two ways I can go. I don't want to go back though. I don't want to go where you are, working a job that is filling your blood with poison. Dating someone that is slowly pulling bone marrow through your eyes."

"I don't know what you heard."

"I have to start relying on myself."

"Huh?"

"I just have to try another way. I have to take this road. I have to try this new thing so I don't shrink. I don't get old. I don't get sick. I don't become hateful. I don't pretend to die again. It is getting boring."

"OK."

"What are you doing?"

"Eating. What? I don't want my food to get cold."

"Maybe it is not that serious."

A Tranquil Mind is not a Little gift.

"There is this glue that we are living in on a daily bases. It is this thick glue."

"Is it like a bowl of glue?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Just thought I would get out ahead for once."

"I'm looking to get out of it a lot of times now."

"You mean like unglue yourself."

"What?"

"Take the glue off?"

"It happens a lot at work. It is like this gathering of confusion and When we are having a problem. When we are lazy, you know? The glue becomes this complaining. It becomes this coat we can put on to shield ourselves from commitment to what is presenting itself. It renders

"I am not a fucking Saint by any stretch of the imagination."

"Why do people say stretch of the imagination? That just doesn't make any sense to me."

Enlightenment is a demolition project.

William is back

"My biggest problem is trying to contain my brilliance."

"Are we to order our food first?"

"It is first this slowing down that day to day life has me doing ,and then this speeding up that my mind has me doing to capture truth. See? I found this awesome dude that I have to hold the fuck back just so you can recognize me."

"Wait what?"

"I have to first slow down to catch everyone else---to trudge through this life as anonymous as possible. Others have done it by choice, out of fear, out to grab normalcy."

"Right of course. I'm sure I understand."

"I quiet myself at a cost, you know?"

"What are you saying?"

"I don't know. Nothing quite fits anymore. I have been playing around with my mind and I found all of these awesome enhancements and I decided to use them. I can't get back to where you are though. I can't have them both. I have to bring this new self along."

"I just want you here to pay the bill."

"I have to bring this altruism with me."

"Just bring your credit card."

Anthony wants to tell you a story.

"Nobody wants to hear my fucking stories anymore."

"Not in the mood for rambles."

"I want to talk. I want to tell pleasant stories."

"It sounds lonely."

"It's not lonely."

"It is."

"It's not. I'm not lonely. I'm doing you a service."

"You think?"

"I know."

"Ok."

"I am interesting. I am relaxed. It will serve the hell out of you to try and participate in a conversation with me."

"OK."

"Conversation is dying; rather a efficacious exchange between people, you know? A rich exchange that is cynical free. One that isn't recycled and held together with hope of approval."

"I don't understand."

"You understand. I'm sure you do.

"What a souring tasting meal."

"A defenseless, rich, vulnerable and challenging conversation. It's like I can smell it. Can you smell it?"

"It smells sour."

"No."

"What would you talk about?"

"About anything that really matters to you. You know? really matters. Any fucking thing."

"Wow. Such a sour meal."

"Are you listening?"

Before you can learn to swim

 you must first learn to float. 

be it water or the natural world, you must trust the stuff you are in. If you fight against it, you are going to gasp and struggle. You may even drown. Yet when you learn to trust it, you see that the water wants to hold you up, not pull you down.

"I have to continue to give up."

"Right."

"You know what I mean?"

"No."

"I have to keep giving up. I'm exhausted..."

"What is this about?"

"I'm inside this spot. I'm all the way in.

Keep going in.

William wants to perform.

"I know it is a play, an elaborate one."

"What?"

"I want to perform now. I want to act for awhile, you know? Just so I can get my work done. I know that's what this play is for. You don't have a clue, but I realize it."

"I continue to realize a lot of things about you."

"OK I can play now, you know? I have stop taking it so seriously. But knowing it,fuck! You know? Knowing this shit is beating up on me. It is pounding on me like rain. A astonishing downpour. I know too much. I know way too much."

"Who says 'way too much?' "

"I have to play while knowing all of this, and it can be a bit much. I don't know. I am starting over."

"Are you?"

"Yeah. It's a lot to know."

"I don't understand."

"That's good for now."

William loves the C

"Ok listen to me."

"OK.

"This entire year has been a grade C for me."

"What?"

"A C, marginal, right in the middle. Average...."

"OK."

"Do you know what that really means?"

"Yeah, sounds like a fucked up year."

"No. It is not at the the two poles. It is not a success, or a failure or an A or an F."

"I know what that means."

"Do you understand why someone desires one of these poles, instead of the middle? The C?"

"You don't expect me to believe that someone desires failure. I can understand success..."

"No, listen, because first you don't have to be conscious. You can let one of these experiences own you. Distract you. What I've figured out is, the C, the one considered average, or most uneventful is the most eventful. The middle is where you are doing all of the work. It is where you become alive. It is where you become alive and more conscious than when you are at one of the poles of success or failure."

"I don't want to ask."

"When you are failing....you are relaxed that there is nothing that can be done. Your house has burned to the ground. You have been hit by a car. You have been wiped out financially. With success you are also comfortable. You are at a ceiling. You might want more. But there is no more swimming required in some cases. It builds on itself. But The C. The C requires attention. It requires you to stay focused. It is a little ways from success. It is a little ways from failure. It makes you not give up. It makes you present. You have to be, you still have life. You have a chance."

"What does that say?"

"I'm not sure. I have had an entire year of the middle. I've had an entire year of almost one direction or the other. Almost. So during that time I wait in the middle.I guess I have had an entire year of staying present. No room to let it ride. I had to stand conscious watch over my life. I highly recommend it."

trust your struggle.

Hugh Miller likes the quiet life.

"There is a life underneath the life. It is like this perfectly little protector over it, you know? It is secure, right?"

"Huh?"

"I like to get down into it sometime. I like to see how it run. But there's no controllers in it, just this clean and shiny console."

"You have nothing to play with. No shiny buttons? No candy like buttons?"

"No. It's very smooth. It's very quiet." 

love wins

William is happy to be terrible.

"I am happy that I am terrible at stuff, because I'm not listening. I'm inflexible.

"OK."

"I need some guidelines. I need to listen."

"You're going to say having lunch with me needs to be amended."

"No. Just seeing the terrible is an accomplishment. I'm not spending a couple of years forcing bear sweat into bottles. I'm not losing so many years with this."

"You've thought about it."

"I've thought about it. These guides are right in front of me. Results can come in a quick moment, but it could take me three years to finally get it, because I'm listening to you...."

"I didn't say anything,"

"Or my Mother, those bastards where I punch the clock, or my own fucking feeling that somebody is watching me and needs my story to turn out in a way that they can sleep better at night."

"Sounds like a big production."

"It is. If I get the things that are not hammering themselves out, the fucked up things----quick. It all moves faster for me."

"Life?"

"If I'm terrible and I see it, I get to relax."

"Right."

"This memoir is a hatchet to slash through my own heavy flesh and through the flesh of anyone else who happens to get in the way....But, you see, this is not fiction. This is life. My problem is that I don’t know what I am doing. I lived all this mess but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what I mean by “it.” I have a story to tell, yes, and no one else could tell it but me, but if I tell it now and not next year it will come out one way, and if I could have forced my fat, heaving body to start this a year ago it would have been a different story then."














































Joyce Carol Oates

"I have to work with only the thing that's working."

"Ah sense is what you're making."

Nicholas is in observance.

"I don't know about you but money doesn't belong to me."

"Your money?"

"Why do I hold it precious? The more I think about it I just can't see owning anything in my life. Everything seems borrowed for a bit. Everything seems to flow right out of my grasp up and into including friends...

"Up and into?"

"The only thing I can say that is truly mine, is this observance of this stuff. My observing of this is the only thing I own and can't escape from..."

"I don't know where to start."

"Of course you do."

"No."

"I can wake up, get out of bed and begin watching things come into view, and then disappear. A person can walk into my room talk to me and leave.It can be 5 minutes 8 or 20 hours but they will leave.  I can capture the living room for a moment as I lose the bedroom. Everything is on a treadmill. Not solid. Not mine even if I held it for the rest of my life.

"In here it's the coffee cake it gets down in your gut and becomes a part of your body."

"My observation of all of this is the only thing I can't shake."