Ken Baumann - Solip

Knife down.

I need babied.

Mourning in days in which in ways in which I would not mourn, should not, as I could not mourn to full. The days and nights of old, day of stimulation. Stimulation breeding obligation, obligation in places as in things. The days and nights in which my heart would flutter and my brain would hum, I could feel it hum, I could feel it hummm almost as if the blood in circulate was charged negatively, positively — absolutely. Interior and anterior poll shifts. Locating the helix within you; earing. As much fun as digging up old parts, old bodies, dripped in black, a two-dimensional rainbow sheen. Ahh, a sigh: The old days. My patent days. Days spent and days saved. Solitude in public.

To the best of my ability: Dark. And within it, the First Difficulty. (here) This is present firstly and prominently: What surfaces first in sense? The smell of the cell? The dark? No, not the dark, as the dark seems to be a Difficulty that is prior to all other Difficulties and not a sense or sensible at all; the dark is as much a genesis as to become a pregenesis; that thing that is all want, the thing that belies, that belies any order; god. Dark is, as, god. And I within it. Dismissed, and nexting. So then must I move to sussing out the first earthly and tangible Difficulty. What comes first? Sight — what is seen in the dark, presently, irregardless of histories of maladapted eyes — or Sound — what is heard now, and what has always been heard; sounds of my body and sounds of the chimes, our light — or Smell — which is a muck, and the most comfort, as it, the Smell, in its muck, is a fire that makes me move, the earthly thing — or Taste — which is always dry yet forms a palette — or Touch — which can be lost with a hard enough telling out, as I am now, as you are witness — or Else?

The First Difficulty.

Smell:

A stew. If the floor weren't so cool I'd simmer. The square air seems to be a constant and unmoving humid mass, ductless, unsucked, not at all hovering but an invisible cloth or sauce. Goose down without the small explosions. Reduced down to bubble. When I move about, in fugues, or to keep the body primed, the heat increases. The humidity follows. What I am left in on those days is a box almost bereaving. Drowningtime hallucinations were familiar; I tried so desperately to swim up. And now, in my calmer state, in this broadest hour, the air seems to do its best to impress and let the cool off the floor work upwards, rise. Let it rise, I take to whispering. (let it rise) All of these details, the state of the air or what's left of it, add up to insulation. Smell, the pugnant, is quick to strike and mood in shifts. Like a swamp filled with battling viscosity: Oil slicks and crocodile shit and runoff. A now and newly almost entirely predictable cycle. Murk to muck to must to murk. My sedimentary deposits in each corner — the come, the shit, the piss, the spit, the skin — seem to float and intermingle like partygoers swollen with liquor, frequently vomiting on each other. Rarely do I take in a sweetness; the smell is always a hue of sour, anymore. Maybe it once was sweet. Or never.

The Second Difficulty: Sight.

Was blind, tied upon, as if a black handkerchief rested on my face, firstly tied and then pulled tight and tied again, little, stripping me of sidewalks and peach trees and dogs of all breeds. Public, depublicked. Vanishing. Motor functions waned like mooned seas. As my balance went my head lolled. Two concussions counted, many others felt as I stumbled about this space in search of growing boundaries; stumbling, only to find that the walls were as fixed as my plane of sight. Lost amid a growing set of paths and autonomous squares. Fixed and lost. A deepened gone. Something I could count on. It was with this, the realization of a present fixture, a certain lack, that fed me and kept me gaining; feeling and using my fingers as eyes. The parts are elastic, capable of rebounding. I was only shaped as I myself wanted to be shaped, I would say, sometimes out loud. Shaped. An orb among geomes. Corners and intersects, running lines. In despair I would blank, and then come alive thinking of the walls. The floor and ceiling an exclusion as if I could escape only through running — physical channels. Not fly or dive, dig, climb. Walking or running, toward a horizon. I must return. The Second: Sight. Sight. I eat sight. Another obstacle: Monsters. Poisoned teeth and cave throats. Eyes that bright; the light was what scared me. Again, must I derail? Let me — I will — say. The lacked sleep, the sleep that someone else claims for me — beach front? snowed in? — sometimes gathers and finds me and knocks me, prize fought. Ashamed as I'm knocked back and away from clear transmission. Channels muddied. Not that I can swim, anyway. Also: A perpetual and acute awareness of throbbing. A throbbing born in the back of my head and stemming out in waves to my nose, collecting with it my eyes and forehead and skull and sinuses. All pushed forward, called to attend. Sharply saluting. I'm sure that if I could see, or if baffled in light, the throbbing would go. Blinking becomes aristocratic. Con — comfortable in saying that, in dreams, my eyes are still.

The game in which my mother slept, my brother fainted, my father climbed the stairs. Rules unique. Setup approximately three to four years. Completion time forty five minutes, dependent upon discretionary habits exercised in bathrooms with visual aid. Operatives and agents. Cowboys and indians. The yeller and the snuffed.

Placed on a spinwheel and spun. The fingers above you sticky with meat. Cleaned only after a second turn. Cards drawn. Professions picked. Paths. Incomes. Squares determine your fate, and a wheel, but the squares much more; the squares defined and always shifting color but never really different. How little I knew, then. How I should have washed the meat off my fingers before—

Paused. Bricks broken, chasms jumped. Danger narrowly avoided. Royal boomed: I hate those fucking things. You want to control something? I'll show you. Little heart hopes for a missing mother, a day vacated to a mall or worse. Ceilings and low walls pale green. The sea haunts, even without eyes, the sea haunts. To return to smell: Salt. Salt is a prospect, a nurse, a favored customer. Salt always comes back. Tail wagging. Solid. Safe from boots.

Most arguments: This isn't what it should be. The better arguments: This isn't what it never is. Nothing touches—

I'm kept company. You see: The hand. It's a friend. I'm sure you—

I'm sure you—

But does the hand ever leave?

The timing! Quick: Huddled, the hand must see me as such. Huddled in the corner and sniveling. Although: No. Again. (no) Not scared. Insofar. Torpid. Diprot. A palmless cypriot. How this affects the Difficulties? How it asserts them. Don't be silly. Don't be stupid. Don't be indulgent; no pretense. Hand. Check. Light. Check.

Pen: Check.

Pen.

Paper. And now: Pen.

Pen: PEN. There.

Engendered. A danger to ourselves, right?

A fucking pen.

A fucking. Certainly.

Another invitation to grab at it? To grab again? I should shout an inquiry: AM I A DOG? DO YOU KNOW I'M IN HERE?

A pen would be too convenient a symbol.

Do you realize where I am? Do I?

Benign, the hand has been, and patient. The white pill was passed on. A supplement. A get well soon card. A truck. A boulder. The square that I've thumbed and all but eaten could very well contain my passage out. A map. A key in folding. The pen a supplement. A thorascope. A weapon. Or: Toys. All is toy, amusement. Closed circuit television and me a star. Memorabilia with my naked form: Episode 100101001: XXXXX pisses in box! Shits in his box! Sleeps! Legions from the highest regions. Hordes. Trolls in underbaths. Approaches teem with posterity, admiration as ploy. Or perhaps the hand enacts a session of monument, a procession, building, pill (none) to paper to pen to a baby sun: a baby sun, spinning on a gentle axis.