Ken Baumann - Solip

But, ahh, with the pen I can test this room for slope like never before. I would grab the pen, lay it down, watch — no, listen — for a roll. After all, common inertia was stripped and laid bare long ago. Forced to adjust. I could very well be living on an inverse plane. At the very least angled. Much rarer. Finally I'm given a measure! Blessing! Blessing!

Could I draw the shape of this? Could I mark the shape of blank?

Paid: The days of logical lubrication. Looks in books. Tracking. As I see it, knowing is a feature for those above ground. Abandon hope. Invoke your right to wealth.

Invitations. The pill: to EAT. The paper: to CRUSH, to EAT. The pen: to FEEL for INK. The pen: to STAB.

To stab.

There, a light; revolt. What about that? What would He say if I attacked? Royal. What would he decree? Praise, surely. Praise and then appraise. Must be scored, everything must be scored. Bowel movements, quantity and quality, stickiness of lingerie catalogue pages, bowls of blank eaten, mouths fed, sets of wheels, geography. A constant syllabus, a constant index. A private consult, though, and not open to the public. He, frail near the end of him but always kingly in spittle and dip, belonged to the family. Belongs ever still.

Inhabits. In, habits.

So what if I did pick up a pen and bring it down in the hand, set it into the mold of bright, given without fear of a swift retreat, me nearing. Can it smell? The white white — so near yellow — contains something in the thread of it, it must be power. Or what if the hand, upon nearing, screens full of holes and puckering blood? And then: What of my company? In what proximity? Blood is not vapor; blood is a human trail. Are they there, one to each side of me? And what of above and below? Why don't I hear them, their moans? Movement? The thought of it all nearly stops me dead now, on the far wall. The horror of others supersedes other horrors. I'll take the fucking pen, then. I'll move it. (see) But first, moving forward.

Now, as the feet move: A little provocation, some needling. When the pen is taken, what then? Is there, in my hand and heart, a vocation suddenly formed? Responsibilities and regularity etched permanent in residual dust. Herein lie a father. Hush. Hurting. A transmission, no? A set, a string of code, manifest and deluged. And after all — an audience? The old story of fallen trees, their sounds; a potboiler, the end-all question of that century, science pegged a footlength behind the capacity of design; that of: In what motor lie the I? And is it shared? So, for one like me who cries in public — but let the ions and tears merely flow positive; the contemptible is best coveted! — let me scream a bit and claw at the rafters while being torn toward the floor: A boy possessed of toys is a boy until someone speaks.

Another plod up and another string: Seems to me cells are to be escaped. Cells. We leave both and we are free to roam in lattices of light.

A pen! We cordially invite you to—

THE NUREMBERG TRIALS.

8pm. Look sharp, be sharp.

Step, repeat to come. What of the unseen thicket? Its disappearance? Mourned are the days in which sailors and colonial postees are torn apart by phantom creatures — ecologically fondled then left to dry; possibly extinct — in savannas, mourned are the nights in which knees are cut on bristle. Retreats seemed unlikely, then.

No.

Another step, halving as I go. Avoiding, clearly. Feigning mistake. I must take note of permutations of the piano, and my god how they've warped.

Nearing.

A slow dread found alone in old media. All of it: It's all a filth, but not junk.

Now—

Here.

It is, in cylinder. How a meaning, an arrived essence of a thing, when fixed, memorized, made rote, how meaning circumvents the stuff that gives it reference. How reverence is removed. How the thing continues, as itself, above no beyond — no outside of the thing. Words reached around, the light, its patterns, grasped behind. A sonorous fucking and dragging away.

Oh how the quality of mental health has declined.

White palms again.

With my back to its light I am a cast and a mold. Aware of this. Also aware of how not I want to move. So I won't. Better, yes? The pen (nope) in second order sight. That's how I treat free misgivings—

Turkey, and an elbow emerging from a formerly gobbling ass. The emerald glass, hilted, slipping down his nose over and over, the free hand to push them back and come down with forefinger and thumb and swipe away the grease on a nose. Hard job, this stuffing, he decreed. Hard job, he decried.

More of the illumination roulette. Let's say the hand sees true and witnesses my back, the pen created and taken. Might a reward be waiting in light? As long as I stay fixed, a gloss of white cherish. Ehh. Can't chance it. Must remain mobile. The forgotten paper. Couldn't bear to see the glyphs on it, if they are apparent. Ready to ship.

Closed. Roulette spun. Ball on black.

Here I am again with my tools. How convenient. What comes next? A cave fire? Perhaps an oblong stone? Bone piles? Fuck. Toss it.

And now I cannot ever let the paper drop. Blank! Palms up in surrender. Wares the white pill, waves the white flag.

Body in degenerate. Feeling for mirrors and nothing more. Sifting for a solution; my hands will sweat. The grime will coat the paper in time. But: Who says your hands are clean?

Smile, ladies and gentlemen. Smiles.

Computational species. Full of circuits. Not brimmed with grey zones, free of flush quarters, throbbing and lay flat, pings of the highest frequency. Or everyone's at lunch.

Lightbulb! Click. Solution forthcoming, must warm hands—

…

The solution is in folding! Let me explain — autodidacts flee. The tiny slip of paper seen here can very easily transcend its spatial bounds! For, if rightly folded, the paper, like magic, ascends into a central position in its containing room and floats there, as if hovered by helium fog. But, I assure you, helium fog the magic is not! No. For a limited time only, order today and you'll receive a second copy of Float The Paper Indefinitely for half the price, that's right Half The Price. And what an easy solution! Cue: Chunk Mom. “You know, I just — once I saw it — just had to have this solution. You've seen it — it's incredible! And the folds are so easy and take very little dimensional time and space. You could do it covered, is what I'm saying. Completely covered. I'm wary!” Act now and use your second copy as further proof that the first copy was sufficient! Yes! You could lose it all! The Float will outlast you! Call today!

Either that or I try to find a soft spot on me, free of excretion. Then, using that spot as a sort of landing pad, keep the paper on weight for entirety. Laying lengthwise could prove viable. The dimple in my chest.

Brick by brick I have to sweat. Motives. Light benign no more.

Possible.

How many engagement rings have I swore to you?

Hungertight.

Have you noticed the propensity for grandiloquence that marks those locked away? Performance is the key. My bible is full of negative capabilities.

Shocked. Shocked that I've passed over a startling potential of the pen: To wound myself! Kill, even. Wow. The pen, the point of it, could also at the very least become a jam for you. For us. The code string could halt and bunch up and then dissolve, for I could strike myself with aphasia with half the force of a levered fall. I see the speech regions. I have faith in my abilities.

Perhaps those outside — dare I glance away from Outside? abandon the term? their is always a container, prerequisite — expect me to feed on the lot: Pill, Paper, Pen. Three, five, three. If a peach pit comes next, slimed and brown and shrunk in that bloom, I will suspect numerological foul play. Patterns were promised away. Struck through with a—