Vignettes

On the problem of going off shadows, the desirability of debts, the making of these debts, and the inability to discern where the author ends and the character begins.


What does it mean to see the reflection before the man?
And not even in a good, smooth-surfaced mirror, often--
upturned and fuzzy in the concave bellies of spoons,
dark and splotched through the protective screen on my phone, then the actual screen of my phone,
through a window on a door, just faint enough to tell me your behind me, or else you're far away, and in front of me, on the other side--
What does it mean? I have gotten a few good sketches of him, what I think he looks like. But I have had only these other reflections to go off of; I still have no conception of the roundness of his face, the declivities pushed behind his collar bones.

~~

I do enjoy collecting debts. More than I should. I want all the debts in the world. Not the money, not the things owed--the owing. The wanting. The holes. I am not entirely sure what would be taken when things are given, loaned away like this--there is some animal, some idea squatting in that hole. But at least for now, I do not know it; all I know is holes.

~~
I am just left of a klepto. A collector. A hoarder. Which means that sometimes, I am one. Just like Kreisler, who is just left of Ettlinger, is sometimes that darker man, sees him in the water as his own strange self.
So yes, you're right: it's not a phenomenon. It kinda is just me takin' shit. Because I felt like it needed a place to be, and the place it was, needed to be empty.
I've mentioned before: when I was younger and didn't have to fuss about books and school, I went outside everyday to catch stuff.*
Frogs, moths, snakes, (certain) bugs. But you always let it go, even if you want to keep it. And that's the other thing: you always want to keep it.
More time; more of it. A nice little pile of images. Of trinkets. Of somethings. I do not want the pile or the clutter, or even the actual object; just a symbol, a reminder that I have taken something. That I have made a hole somewhere else. That I am making a pattern. A shape. an etching. When the woodworker sweeps the pine shavings from his floor, there must be pleasure in it; in then looking at the thing that was holed out, carved, made. The object is never the pattern; never the reason. The mail.

~~

When I write, I write from that silly, writerly position where I am half myself and half a writerly inclination. This is problematic, because I will continue saying things that seem as if they apply to me, when really, I have begun talking of what is just to the left of me. I do not mark these switches, these alternations clearly, because that is a messy business--there are thoughts that are both my own and those of the character I am working with. When does Hoffmann become Murr? There is no single point; it is a slow, subtle transition. Abruptness is illogical. The snake that eats the tail of the snake that eats its tail: don't ask me to pull these two apart. It won't be pretty.