raincomplex's New Writeups

All that you can take with you is that which you give away. (place)

2009-11-29T06:06:48Z

Gg i v e Me your tired & poor,
I will take them with me.
Ll e n d Me your burdens & worries,
For they are of no use to you here.

Rr e m e m b e r the world You leave behind,
difficult though it may be, waking,
Ii Know, Ii have seen Forgetting,
& know what it does to you here.

Dd e a f now, in dew-morning coolness the
faeries are all hiding but the sunlight is everywhere,
Ee v e r y w h e r e Thε Sun, Thε Colours
(elsewhen, there is bending in stead of refraction)

Ll i g h t in yr eyes—on yr hands—
this is not the night yielding to understanding
Tt h i s IS NOT YESTERDAY. (apolog—my eyes)
Tell me, do you see your forgotten moments, …

Bookseller (person)

2009-11-29T05:52:59Z

I buy Demeter for a dollar fifty.
Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905. Price One Shilling.
"Written [and] acted by [the ladies of Somerville College, Oxford]
at the inauguration of their new buildings in that year," 1904.
Surely the author did not realize a tattered copy would
find its way through a hundred years into my hands, gingerly
not reading it but examining the binding (exposed at the spine-ends)
and the rough page-edges, and fawning over pages 21 through 28,
which were cut too short on the bottom,
and in general not interested in Hades' abduction of Persephone.

I buy the complete remains of Walt Whitman for four fifty.
Though his long lines do little for…

slow fire (event)

2009-11-28T21:49:36Z

Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap.

While shelving books, I keep my pace by the tap at the end of the cover-to-shelf-metal slide. I try not to think about all the people living inside the books, but I've been here so long it's automatic. I know the titles by call-number, most I could recall just by observing the volume at rest from ten meters, and a handful by heft alone. It's been a long day, and the cart is almost empty. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Arobira and Gohabia, the Twin Jewels, restored to non-fiction shelf P, for Potter, both numbered 999.7P. Shhh, tap. Shhh, tap. Shhh, click.

Click? ...soft tap. I look up but the shadow has already gone. White amorphous reflection dances in the exit door's plexiglass—shadow passes the windows. One. Two. Three. At a pretty good pace. A shadow late for dinner, perhaps? Shh…

him will I blot out of my book (event)

2009-11-28T18:46:34Z

It has been so long, the broken color electronic has begun to fade. Cold metal ktan ktan ktan of linkers running, heads down, hastily scribbling and tossing links to the wind, into the unflinching devouring jaws of the readers above, black toothy skulls with indeterminate eyes, birdlike, hunting and snapping. Back away, Octavius gives smirk at them, pulls softleather sleeve to watch: 2352. 8 min will be fine, he decides, they will get past the reset. A few turn off down a sidelink, weaving through nodeshells and into a sprawling factual, ducking behind the references; the others directly inbound. It is a cold night to be noding. In his mind, Octavius hears his mentor laugh: "Dead Links! Linking isn't really all about putting in some square brackets to keep the CEs off you back: it's about sharing good ideas and guiding the readers along some paths that you, the noder, have thought out on…

this unlight mantis creeps (event)

2009-11-28T07:06:06Z

A mantis that is as large as the moon does not sway and shiver. It stretches forever through the black silent vacuum as if to grasp the earth in its pincers and drink up its oceans. People on their way to work see the mantis glinting off of their tall buildings as it reaches slowly toward the moon, as if to grasp it in its pincers and eat it. You saw the mantis the other night, coming out of a club and clicking over to a VW and crunching it in half. The birds see the mantis on the telephone lines, swaying and shivering in the wind, as its pincers flash and it munches on an insect. The microscope sees the mantis on the slide, gracefully engulfing its prey. God sees the mantis orbiting the nucleus, screaming and not connected to anything. On my gravestone it says I am sorry that some of you do not know the mantis, but some things are forgotten, and that is just the way things are.

How do you know the fishes are enjoying themselves? (place)

2009-11-24T04:25:11Z

Often I see this lovely story reproduced. It goes something like this:

Two monks walk beside a river. One turns to the other and says,
See how the fish play! They are really enjoying themselves!
The second monk replies, You are not a fish!
How can you know that they are really enjoying themselves?
And the first retorts, You are not me!
How can you know that I do not know
that they are really enjoying themselves?

And the narrative ends and I think to myself MY WHAT A LOVELY STORY

ABOUT MONKS, WATER, FISH, PERCEPTION, AND REALITY. I GUESS
WE CAN'T REALLY EVER KNOW WHAT OTHER PEOPLE KNOW
BECAUSE WE AREn't them. It's true sort of!

The secret is that the story continues.

In my Zhuangzi (Columbia University Press. Translated by Burton Watson.)
the second monk exclaims, (and I am paraphrasing)
Yeah! But you're no fish! You still can't…