Timentime again words and winds wound out of mouths of those who were either 

illinformed or illconsiderate

contemptuous  and willfully spouting sly speculations without a shred of evidence
as if the weight and conviction of their words were enough

the faith of their firm words

                               were enough

unfortunately they were to realise that some people took serious offence to their lies

and these people insisted in radical ways that lies were contemptible and bore consequences

consequences  even they hadnt foreseen

* * *

a young man at the back of the room spun a coin on an uneven folding table as he listened 
intently to the loose conversation before him

what should their answer be to these broadsides  -  a barrage of euphemisms ensued  -  though it seemed each of them were trying very hard to minimize the offence of those they spoke of

as if a liar shouldnt be called out as a liar

the young man let the spinning coin die
                                          quietly recording the heads versus tails

with talleymarks pulled in the wood top of the table with his tip of his folding knife     

he worked his knife with a stone

it was as sharp as a scalpel

he used it to skin small game and butcher its meat

its metalblade slipped easily through torqued joints

he was practised and effortless

listening  he heard one word repeated over and over   and it was that word that he too 

scored its prominence timentime again into the table top

beside the heads and tails
                             speculation

or some form or tense of the word

and with evident derision hearing the word wax in their voices sometimes spat out as if it tasted horribly 

another word began to occur in his ears in his head in concert 
                                                                   speculum

the smell emitted from an autoclave came into his nose

its unrelenting sterility and cloister

brilliant stainless steel tools emerged casting reflected light usually reserved for diamond facets

long lazy mirrorball glints cascaded like rainbowed waterfalls across the walls and ceiling quivering  on the green-black-squared tile floor

the young man inside his head visualised the duck-billed instrument quack-quack-quack 

then suddenly yawned
                         YAWN  denied of some now long-lost sleep
miserable and stutter-eyed  and miserable

he witnessed their bills shoved into the mouths of liars

he heard screams into their stretched faces telling them if they didnt recant they were going to exercise the speculums in direct regard to their specious speculations  and they imagined that ratio exaggeration  would be sufficient to break teeth and snap their jaws
                             and that 

that was going to be their choice

their choice

and their decision

* * *

he returned to the piqued voices and droning as his coin was losing velocity and beginning to wobble

it was all talk

they were good at talk

when the coin had decided  and laid flat 

he raised his folding knife in hand to be recognized

the blade catching the light flashed from the back of the room capturing their eyes

and quieted them

and in that bite of silence                                                                                                                                 

he thought better of his extreme consideration  and pulled down his exclamation point 

out of the air

 

he was recognized

he shook his head no thank you

he apologized to the panel and hall that he was no talker

the blade seemed to have cut the earnest discourse

soon the clutch was adjourned with nothing more than words ringing in certain ears and 

the parched throats of others in need of wetting 

however  elsewhere

they talked about the knife in the air at the back of the room

 

they speculated about what the young man might have had to say or meant by his oblique demonstration 

    

and he

he returned home weighted

perplexed by their impassioned words

words  it occurred to him

stacked one atop another atop another and by themselves would never suffice against 

a single action

say  a speculum in retaliation for a baseless lie or speculation

he would sleep on it

dream it through

and wake in the morning and sift the gut-strung beaded and peregrine-feathered dreamweaver above his bed for actionable remnants

in bed lying on his back  he snapped the action of his folding knife open with a flick of his wrist and quieted the blade home with the palm of his other hand over and over and over

then gently placed it on the night table

* * *

on the blackened ceiling above him

he watched the eyes of vortexes curiously muse and languid lazy swirls wash and wane

febrile and waif projections of his interior discourse and discomfit

and they were slashed and stabbed by occasional shards of light off traffic              

the ceilings shallow stucco threw blinked queer shadows and distractions quibbling at its surface

eventually to draw quiet he blindfolded himself with the heels and palms of his restless hands

they fell away when he finally slept

and that sleep

was anointed with slaughter

action

acted better than words

at every turn and around every corner

when he woke in the morning

the knife lay open

1217,  Saturday,  12  4. 14

“Seize all the joy you can that robs no other. Sleep in peace, play in jolly earnest, wag well and mean it, and finally, be happy always.”     

                                               Arsene Houssage

                                                                              

Ive got a hankering for language  and books  literary quotes  and yet Ive got to admit my hankering stood up on end  glared one-eyed on Houssages divot to “wag well”   and worried me with sharp elbows:

So whaddafucks dat mean
   

I dont know

but it really ups the ante

                                                                                                                                 

Houssage also wrote "Des destinees de l'ame"  -  “On the destiny of the soul”  -  which is comforted among other rare and antique books in Harvards Houghton Library

it was recently determined to be bound in human flesh

                                                                                              the practice  anthropodermic bibliopegy
(I didnt know this  though if cut piecemeal  it makes perfect sense) once was somewhat common

"There are many accounts of similar occurrences in the 19th century, in which the bodies of executed criminals were donated to science, and the skins given to tanners and bookbinders.”
 
of course Harvard would say this  communicate it  with a seasoned talking head before its prestigious
back drop  a head fake    a knowing nod

we could chalk its grotesquery up to its polysyllables

but that said

                       if I had a tome bound in human flesh suspicions about my book wouldnt be easily quelled

  

No

Id have to come up a line to boggle an interested mind

I am reminded of Umberto Ecos library  30,000 volumes

Ive read it is referred to as his antilibrary  his unread book  and they are far more valuable than the ones hes read

“A library should contain as much of what you do not know as you can afford”   

                                                                                                                                Nassim Nicholas Taleb 
 

“We do not spontaneously learn that we dont learn that we dont learn . . . the problem lies in the structure
of our minds: we do not learn rules, just facts, and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency not to learn rules) we don’t seem good at getting.”

fascinating  to be sure

fascinating  perhaps  as the book I have

which is also bound in human skin

facts vs rules

being an undergraduate  an undeclared pre-med student  which meant I only had to be enrolled as pursuing a degree in biology

this lush bureaucratic placement provided me untold perks

though some which may have confounded people according to what is determinate  --  through their eyes  --  as to what a perk really is

I suppose its always to be relative or subjective according to an individuals taste

and Ill suppose my tastes  sharpened  honed by scouring used city bookstores for print that was deemed censored or blasphemous  pulp fiction rag and hard-boiled

I suppose  to be polite  I would assess my tastes as acquired

                                                                                                    and  necessarily  secretive

then it was biology or architecture  each had its own practising mad scientists     

Everything was on the table

by my second-year I had acquired a reputation which preceded me as an industrious  exact labrat

I often found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with graduate lab assistants and somewhat infamous with those assistants who were women                                       

                                                through some fault of my own 
 

however in my defense  through more a fault of theirs

remembering then that the bras were off and burnt with draftcards

that sexual experimentation  --  Christ  we were scientists  --  was probably in vogue on par with that of the Roaring 20s or even rivaling Germanys kabarett scene

I took off any notion of training wheels and worried its hinges

                                                                                                            we were ON!

one particular assistant  who possessed a superb mordant wit  worked for the university as a diener

I impressed her when I respectfully ascribed to her  and only her  as Leichendiener         

which means corpse servant

trained in Europe  speaking four languages  she was pleased with my perception 
        

frankly she had it on other women

she also had fantastic brain

and a wicked accent

our sharing was incomparable and during one session at her place in the city  a joint smouldering between us afterwards  I shared a pipe dream of one day having a human skull to ponder as in the famous scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him (Yorick was the prior kings court jester).”

--   You knew him well

--   I did not

The line is Alas poor Yorick I knew him
                                                                            

she steeled her eyes
--   Knew him

I wasnt backing down

she flopped over in bed to her bedstand

her flopping was incomparable
and from the covey beneath a couple of drawers where all manner of lubricants devises and skin mags were fastidiously stashed she produced a handsomely bound collection of Shakespeares plays

--   You really want to do this  Because a side bet is the natural prodigy of a coupling  such as this

--   You really want to do this  This aint an ordinary coupling

--   No  Im fucking your brains out    Obviously

--   Such a clever boy

she was wrong  and I didnt feel bad about it because I had given her a way out           

and usually I take full advantage of those scenarios

thats how I earned my human skull
                                                                                             

it was confined and confided with my secret stash of books in my parents attic accessible only through my bedroom closet  which meant  regarding my dads war injuries  if they needed something from the attic I was the one who fetched it  and I called it  fetching  so it sounded demeaning and wouldnt be challenged

I put together an inventory for them

we did the old debit – credit routine  if they needed something or were storing something else I was the one jumping through hoops  I also called it that to twist a slim modicum of guilt into the webs we weave 

                                                                                                 

look at me  a fuckin gatekeeper 

which made a skeptic of me regarding everything I ran up against thereafter as a man
per the infamous Latin saying  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
  

Juvenal  --  sensational  --  Who watches the watchmen

not a fuckin soul

and that  occasionally  drives me nuts

I beat up a professor over a disagreement regarding our perceptions of the grading scale

his perception was later colored by the embarrassment that I discovered his daughter was a junkie and whoring to make fixes because  as she said  he was done paying for her habit 
       

she also said the habit came from a beating he gave her as a young girl
                                      

she never quite healed

he  I expected  blew off the meeting wed set after lecture for his office

he was gonna learn me something

she showed instead

strung out

she had keys

she insisted I come in and wait with her for him

she said her father could be a real prick

I held her hair as she vomited in a trashcan I yanked out from beside his immaculate desk under the pale
of all the honorary calfskin degrees hanging behind it                                                                                                                                       

he arrived almost an hour and a half late for our scheduled appointment    

incensed  he caught me with a badly conceived punch I saw coming

I caught him with a good combination I learned in Golden Gloves

he learned me honorary degrees outweigh honor

departing the university

                                         it said the professor magnanimously preferred not to have me charged

it also said that it could not in good conscience allow me to remain on campus to further my studies

it would

it insisted

not make it difficult for me to transfer into another college or university

the book  Finnegans Wake  was a parting gift from my Leichendiener

it appears drab

but she upped the ante

suffice it to say Joyce usually speaks to me from the comfort of my home

the skull and a candle are his bookends

1700,  Saturday,  14  6. 14