Plain old grass, Indian strawberry, the occasional clover\u2014invasive, incidentally, he thinks, and so he can\u2019t help but like pull it out\u2014and all of this and too much more emerging from small cracks in the asphalt, or maybe it\u2019s cement, but regardless the ground he\u2019s sitting on, once more, again, naturally. The feeling from a metric ton of Instant-Release Adderall is leaving him, and he\u2019s slumped against a brick wall behind the BMA Sculpture Garden, sweating buckets, and the moon is at half-past ten, and he is here.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening is that the Great Observationist is rolling his back against the bricks, and he\u2019s thinking about frogs and how some species can inflate themselves to try and lodge in the throats of frog-eaters. And about how he feels so very much like a true American Citizen for some reason, tonight. About how he\u2019s got the shakes, and about how in maybe five minutes he\u2019s going to have the worst headache of his entire life, again, just like yesterday. About how Rachel used to call it his \u201cStimulant Thumper,\u201d and about how she actually made the whole dependency thing sound pretty silly instead of really very sad, and about how he could desperately use some silliness right now. Rachel never needed to see it all. Never felt compelled to break the world down into a telephone book of sensations. This is blindness he can\u2019t afford. There\u2019s an ant on his leg right now. Chilling. \u201cCold-Lamping.\u201d He can still feel everything there ever has been to feel, but he can tell it\u2019s all waning. There is no worse feeling for him. It\u2019s worse than death.<\/p>\n
The Obster\u2019s got a wen on his neck, and he\u2019s really digging at it. It might be a pimple. It might be squamous cancer. He bites his lip and can feel his own teeth. One of his shoelaces is threaded through the wrong eyelet. Indian strawberry is non-toxic and tastes like nothing, they say, but the leaves are like lettuce. He has a mustard stain on his crotch. Four-leaf clovers aren\u2019t nearly as rare as you think they are. His skin feels like it\u2019s peeling off in layers. If you pull one of the fibres in a wart, the whole thing bleeds for some reason. He doesn\u2019t have a wart, but he\u2019d prefer one to squamous cancer. You can\u2019t crack your back on a brick wall the same way you can stretch out each individual vertebrae on say a linoleum floor. The corners of his mouth are a little irritated, split and raw; whenever he opens his mouth, it hurts. He flexes his left leg until it nearly cramps, and his foot tips over a top-heavy dandelion.<\/p>\n
So he\u2019s got the shakes, and what\u2019s happening now is that he\u2019s watching a trespassing party, for someone\u2019s birthday, for which they hopped the sculpture garden\u2019s fence and are now just lounging by the giant red structure thing maybe forty feet from here. Over there. And he\u2019s got a footprint on his shin because one of them tripped over him like an hour ago, even though he is very obviously right here, and has been, for almost three hours. What they call a wastoid. Observing. Flushing amines down the neurochemical toilet. They don\u2019t understand the work he\u2019s doing. He doesn\u2019t know them, but he might as well, because he sees them and their invariably patterned polos tucked into their pants, and those sort of lip-curling looks you get from contemporary Beatniks, and he\u2019s hearing their voices now. And but so he likes to imagine that he\u2019s there instead of here, impending crash. They\u2019re all teeth. Mashing junk food and like stripping matte hoagie wrappers of mayonnaise\u2014demolishing the occasional J-bird, which he can definitely smell. But seriously masticating regardless. He\u2019s not very good at imagining. The gap between tapering buzz and head-splitting meltdown is a moment\u2014not long and shortening every week\u2014a moment of something, but he can\u2019t describe it without getting very anxious\u2014and but so it hurts him to try.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re lying in hammocks attached to the trees over there. By an orange streetlight, close to the patio but still in the grass. There\u2019s a birthday cake, half-sliced and half-eaten, divorced from plastic packaging, on a blanket next to a boombox. The Great Observationist\u2019s ears are rumbling, just a little bit. Accompanied by this guy buried in fabric, free-swinging, fingerpicking a Bob Dylan tune in a way that isn\u2019t irritating.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re talking about whatever it is you talk about when you\u2019re with aggressively congruent friends. About old classmates who peaked in high school, vacations to be taken in three-years time, nearly-totaled credit cards, the doldrums of working in corporate advertising. It\u2019s background noise, but trying to focus on it gives him images of lives he can\u2019t touch anymore. He aches like he\u2019s watching television. A discarded piece of plastic wrapper blows toward him and lands in the grass right there. He need to look at it, but wonders if anyone would ever notice its absence. One of them is talking loudly now, gesturing toward the big red sculpture thing as though it has some deep meaning only he can grasp.<\/p>\n
And this whole time, the G.O. has got his little steno pad in his trembling hands, blank, again, except for his heading, \u201cObservations and Corresponding Feelings,\u201d and his pen is on the ground and is rolling away from him, again, and he\u2019s broken off the shirt-clip that keeps it (the \u00a0pen) from doing that. And he\u2019s in full spiral because he\u2019s drowning in it, again, but can\u2019t stop and might never.<\/p>\n
Right now he\u2019s thinking about how there is one dry-erase marker in his apartment, and it\u2019s completely dry. About how the ant is back, running laps on the ground and ducking into tufts of grass. About how the pen is, out of nowhere, so heavy. About how they don\u2019t tell you how heavy pens can be. About how many sores he\u2019s got on his face, and how the one between his eyebrows won\u2019t go away. About how he\u2019s seriously teetering on the brink of cranial annihilation. About how when it comes, the headache will flatten him, but not as much as the dullness. About how the only thing worse than the headache and the dullness is the fear of never feeling anything again. About how withdrawal is an artistic mandate. And about how he misses Rachel right now. He can\u2019t decide whether he\u2019s meant to capture life or succumb to the noise. Somewhere, he\u2019d lost the line between the two, and now he\u2019s just floating. Taking everything in, but missing the point. The ant\u2019s running into the plastic wrapper now. Trapped at once in an unsatisfactory metaphor, is what he\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n
And now he remembers.<\/p>\n
He remembers, kind of out of nowhere, one of his last birthdays as just Obie Michaels, pre-Observationist, maybe two years ago, just before the Adderall thing started to get a little out of hand. In Rachel\u2019s backyard (Rachel, who looked very much like a rabbit, who tended to be periphery incarnate) her backyard, in late January, where they sat by the fire pit and warmed cold hands and talked about something. The G.O. kind of forgets how it started. She traced little shapes on his knee without thinking. He was pretty sure he liked it.<\/p>\n
And Rachel had her legs over his, and they were making little interlocking rings out of their fingers. Said something like you\u2019ve got the twitch again, tilting her head toward his jaw. He never noticed this, and he couldn\u2019t decide whether it was unconscious or subconscious, or if it was just the \u2018rall. And but what Rachel kept meaning to ask is where does Obie think he\u2019ll be in two years, maybe.<\/p>\n
He said he didn\u2019t know. She had this way of paying attention that unsettled him, deeply, where she\u2019d hold his hands and like look at him. He said he\u2019d like to be published somewhere. Big, maybe. She nodded and drew circles then, small and careful.<\/p>\n
She asked him a question but the only thing he gathered was that the inside of her nose was like cavernous. He looked there instead of her eyes, usually, because nostrils are easier to digest. He said something to the effect that he wanted to be a sort of creative institution somewhere. The Great Campus Writer. Or like the resident Noticing-Machine. He said he wanted to be voracious, and the word tasted like tin. She traced the word \u201cvoracious\u201d on his leg, and another word too.<\/p>\n
He asked if that was too much to ask.<\/p>\n
None of the four adjacent fences in Rachel\u2019s yard were hers; each belonged to a neighbor, each built with a different wood (the one on the right made of chicken wire, actually), and each painted a different color. One of them was spanking new. Another had been standing, rotting, bug-infested, since before she was born. She tabulated splinters-per-year and kept the figures in a notebook. She liked numbers, and also things that were falling apart but still standing. She kept the notebook under her bed. She kept everything under her bed. The G.O. is pretty sure Rachel died last May, but he can\u2019t remember how.<\/p>\n
Her thing was that she needed to tell him, between these short misty breaths, that there should be a way to know if all love is worth anything in the future-tense. A big yellow notice mailed upon first-sight: \u201call of your love will have been wasting on me.\u201d She laughed when she said this, but it wasn\u2019t a joke. He didn\u2019t laugh, but said something about future-perfect-progressive tense.<\/p>\n
The fire didn\u2019t seem to contribute anything other than light. At some point, it began to snow. But not enough to warrant attention. Between word-tracing and pieces of sentences he let slip between her fingers, she said she loved him dearly. To which he said he knew. She shivered for some reason.<\/p>\n
He noticed the birds had flew. The porch light was dim, and it was orange, and there was an abandoned spiderweb threaded between the bulb socket and the siding, and in it was a moth that\u2019d been dead for who knows how long.<\/p>\n
And he said maybe something like actually, now that he thinks about it\u2014and so but like one of his greatest assets is that he\u2019s good at feeling stuff, and that he\u2019s actually a feeling factory. Rachel said she didn\u2019t have a clue about where she might be in two years. Obie kind of started pulling at his hair a little bit and asked if Rachel thinks this is something an artist has to have in order to make it: this compulsion to feel what there is to feel, always, constantly. Rachel said nothing. He said artists who can\u2019t feel never make anything worth masticating. Chewing on, he meant.<\/p>\n
He was still conscious of her leg on his, and about how stiff her hands were. He was feeling indeed, he decided, right then. Oh yeah. Her pants were burgundy. Wool socks intricately patterned. Sneakers with frays near the toes and worn treads. And then the soreness of his tailbone. The tightness of the corners of her mouth. Inaccuracy of the voiced lateral approximant when she tried to pronounce \u201clove\u201d just then, in a sentence that he\u2019d missed because he was entirely too busy feeling. She said something about observation, and also courage. Have the courage. But like he missed that too.<\/p>\n
And her mom opened up the kitchen window, upstairs, and stuck out her head. Like a haunt of \u201cback then,\u201d or like an artifact of the time. Experiencing in the second-hand. She had nasolabial creases and glasses. He can\u2019t really remember what her voice sounded like anymore, which makes him feel something indeed, but he can\u2019t decide what. And she asked if either of them would like hot cocoa or tea. Obie said he wouldn\u2019t mind some warm milk, and she kind of blinked at him.<\/p>\n
Rachel kept tracing the word \u201cvoracious\u201d on his leg like she was trying to remember how it felt.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s how it goes and goes and goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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