We seek oblivion 

            we chase it our death wish as readily as we chase our life wish

some buzzed cat in conversation who wandered into the liquor store where he clerked

they talked before shelves of tequila

Manh who knew there were this many tequilashuh  Wha they think theyre scotch or whisky or wine

More than just a few Ill grant you

Yes

Exhausting

Who knewHUH(exaggerating echoing his dull rejoinder)

You got a queer look on your face manh when I mentioned death wish  You do know what Im talking about

I dont  I dont have a death wish

Of course you do maybe you dont call it such but you we all do

I dont

You may believe you dont 

                   you know your exhaustion at the end of the day  Were exhausted from contending with our jobs with other people making money were exhausted and when we get home we eat stay up for a bit then we seek sleep and sleep is the vehicle to our dreams and nightmares and they happen for us in pursuit of our death wishes       

Illuminating them                         

Terrifying us

Death reaches out of life

You need only look at a tree to confirm it see it exist in life in real time

Diseased they refuse to fall  

Dying they refuse to fall 

Killed they stand and weather death and over time drop pieces of themselves sticks and whole limbs

Think of their treetops dead and crooked  Wood shafts lightning inverted running up into the sky and nearer the earth the tree hides its death behind green leaves

They still flower and bear fruit

They grow more frail every year

And  if you really care to see  on windless days they move   

And seeing them move we have to create excuses to explain it away

Anything thatll sound legit

But why lie

        the tree moved it sighed it shifted as we do to make ourselves comfortable

No the wind did it                                   

There is no wind

So we lie to become more comfortable comforting ourselves because we havent an explanation

It seems everything needs to have a reason or an explanation if something is unexplained it creates doubt
And we dont like that

We want to be assured

So lying assures us

Lying is easier than accepting doubt                      

A lie is a coin weve minted

Heads or tails one or the other and agreed and decided on the result of the flip we accept it

Thats the deal we make when we lie

But now it has to be remembered or other lies have to be made up to protect it

Sever a lie and look inside it  tree rings  overlapped   overlapping     its heart its core is hidden and protected

he nodded his head firmly

he said  Yaknow I gotta wonder what you would have talked about instead if Id talked to you in front of the whiskys

The life and death wishes you mentioned you said occurred to you during your first iteration as a therapist

Yes  My first

And obviously youre a long way from that iteration

I am

Is it possible your recollection or the vernacular youre using now is faulty regarding it as a wishFreud I understand described life and death instincts

But instincts arent wishes

He identified associated his life instinct with sexFreud was all about sex and death with aggression and healthy if healthy is appropriate a healthy aggression externalised against the other

I can see how you might align a wish with instinct though to me an instinct is basic a wish is created it invites something more though I wouldnt think youd agree  

But no matter 

I am intrigued however that you have ascribed iterations to yourself

You disagree that we are iterations that they occur to us over our lives

Id call them changes changes that we have either brought onto ourselves or are ours by circumstances which initially had nothing to do with us                                            

Then unfortunately we are collatedl with them

My life is made of iterations

So youve been utterly guided by your decisions alone  No influences

Thats bullshit 

          and I say bullshit because right now if I were to assume the inspired warrior iteration you mentioned to me earlier and knocked you headlong into these shelves of tequila my fist to your jaw the crashing handles and fifths that randomness that influence might make of you an iteration you hadnt an imagination of not five minutes earlier

Not your decision

Which isnt to say that I havent found this conversation exhilarating

Its not often someone comes in to buy booze typically an in-an-out proposition and intellectually spins me

Although I might suggest you save your iterations for the likes of her outside leaning up against your sports car and looking quite fetchingShe got legs that go for a mile and I hardly ever pay attention to a womans legs

        

1516,  Monday --  Labor Day,  5  9. 16

1111,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  7  9. 16

he was considering a litany of Homos that frankly he had not read of before or recognised they might even exist 

Homos for every occasion

intimately he knew Homo erectus Homo sapiens(even Homo sapienssapiensss – the Stutterer) Homo neanderthalensis

he cut his teeth on them

but obviously he left it to a bigger-brain than his to inform him of Homo sapiens (his need to know) Homo faber (his need to make) Homo credens (his need to believe) Homo ludens (his need to play) and Homo Max Frisch ((Technology is) the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it)

it was a spectacular array of Homos and picking through them he wondered gamely if one had to commit to a particular sect or if they were of accord and fluid and he could flow between them at will (curiously at this exact moment he was listening to The Great Society from 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fd7s5d_nhQ )  

certainly  Homos  theyd be keen for any crisscrossing and flowing

prudes not allowed

and then churned into this mix this muddling of his brainpudding were the exquisite candle-and-blacklighted pics shot by his Black Magic Woman inside their Kearney Motel room in Long Beach California(he strongly recommended it)

she had a fantastic knack for depth of field lighting and delicious self-determined poses 

it hadnt been a long morning but it had turned into a very sensual one

1034,  Monday  --  Labor Day!,  5  9. 16

he had unexplained reasons why he wouldnt have noticed

his nose was buried in Who Fears Death reading of a child of rape an ewu reading of her Eleventh Year Rite which was unlike anything he could imagine 

                           female circumcision

yet walking up on it he reared to a stop up on his toes because it spanned the width of the sidewalk(hed have to look to pick his footsteps) he heeled as if he were walking dead-on into a street sign whose weeping-rust metal pipe stained the concrete its eyelevel sign to slap and drop him if he didnt duck sidestep it or stop

years of walking and reading honed whatever that sense was  just as it had honed the senses of stepping into the empty air above a high curb or onto cracked and heaved concrete slabs or of people either oncoming or coming up from behind him that were somehow irritated by him sometimes belligerent

he simply knew obstacles were there and moved around them as a blind man might without a cane

apparently overnight an overflow an overwatering on the Fine Arts school property washed earth out from under the Creeping Cotoneaster shrubs their berries gleamed bright red as if the water wasted spilt across the walk and over curb into the storm sewer incensed them  they glared

he felt suddenly apologetic towards their myriad accusations

but his sharper reason elbowed him in the ribs and unbridled his tingling consciousness  letting him sluff it

he could feel strongly for Nature  

something he rarely felt for his own two-legged kind

hed felt that way since he was a boy

unexplained reasons why

beyond the tailings of earth there were pale grit fingerlings that looked like long shadows if the earth could gather and stand on itself to cast them

its earthbits were rolled and worn smooth like bbs and smaller

they were scattered and dry on the aged-gray concrete       

of them he noticed they seemed to make up lines  broken lines                                                         

and when he walked out onto the street and stood oblique to them they seemed to fashion an obscure text
perhaps braille

where was a blind person when you needed one

ants moved among its spoil  

they were small red ants and black ants a tad bit larger than the reds

they wheeled and spun they turned threw themselves into reverse like epileptics in go-carts and all he could imagine was that there must be microscopic organic matter freed in the turned earth impossibly small grain that could be mined from the broken and cracked orbed husks        

grain that held nothing for two-legged apes like he

he stepped forward towards the curb to let a car pass behind him

he didnt bother to turn and meet the drivers glare or those if there were others inside sneering wondering why he stood in the middle of a street as if it wasnt a street

once it passed he stepped back again and tried to decipher what was strewn on the sidewalk before him

he laughed frankly saying to himself   Decipher

he only knew English

                  if some thing was trying to impart something to someone who happened along who was curious enough to entertain its possibility  that it could be a message  in America he wouldnt think theyd write it in another language in Greek Etruscan Latin Hebrew or Arabic script  

he wouldnt think so

then he tried to picture it was a larger script and let his eyes unfocus  relax   simply   look

No

he didnt see anything that way either

the ants milled madly as if his presence exacerbated or piqued their tempers fiddled with their constitutions

finally he conceded it was probably just an interesting concept that occurred to him

there was a good chance in the immediate area that he might be the only person who thought it was worth the while to stop and consider  

someone else might likely believe he was being foolish wasting his time

Are you a fou he whispered to himself under his breath

he laughed

         French

but the scribblescrabble the earthly babble wasnt French either

Im sorry he said aloud  

he addressed the Universe  

Its beyond me  My apologeez                                                                                                           

he turned and walked away

but as he did he looked several times over his shoulder before utterly surrendering  

he went back to reading Who Fears Death  

the ants sighed silently 

they were relieved the thing was gone

they busied themselves between the letters   

they pushed and tumbled the bits around until they reconfigured them

when they finished they stopped

their busyness wasnt wasted on the Cotoneasters who mesmerised watched their structured deliberation their mad trampling at an end when the thing left

and when the ants quieted the Cotoneasters leaned forward and read what they wrote with the ur-memory in their roots their origin in the Palaearctic temperate regions of Asia Europe and north Africa(Who Fears Death dramatis was within its realm)

they responded to the messages by vigorous shaking or waving their stalks often dislodging berries in fits of laughter

and less often tenuously clasping them together as if in prayer  solemnly regarding their pithy acquittals

people who passed in cars  

if they thought to look outside them

might have been confounded by what they understood was a still or mild day 

they convince themselves that the plants(they didnt know what they were or what they were called it wasnt important) danced on an odd draft or an intemperate breeze or wind 

           

1030,  Saturday,  3  9. 16