and it occurs to me while looking at the tin ceiling with fleur-de-lis-es on it that this is it, whatever 'it' is, and I feel the start of a sentence form in my mouth, like I juuust took a bite of a sandwich, or I'm about to blow a large bubble (medium: gum and saliva, june 2010), and it forms there like a coalescing chunk, and it goes something like: "if there's truth, here, then --"

and the rest of that sentence is cut off by a chorus of internal voices hemorrhaging out from my consciousness asking 'truth? capital-t truth?' and another voice says something like: 'no, I know, it's a philip-larkin-high-windows kinda truth.' and noises silenced with a buzz I look upwards at the ceiling covered with tin and I think of things I should do and places I will be, and I have an anticipatory nostalgia, and while everything is lovely and quite lovely, I know that the best bestest besterest part of the evening will be the bike ride back, the spaces not quite mentioned, the part of an evening that's never shown in the film version. abridged from the book version.

and it is as if: I am here always thinking of centers that are not a center, the absence of a center itself being the organizing principle which becomes a center, ala derrida, the idea of brennschluss that is this persistent idea of having-combusted-fully and leapt forward, the gaze at the yellowish-gray skewed parallelogram-ized window looked up at from a street sidewalk; these things all conspire to be this image of desired absence that pulls me towards this night's end. I say my goodbyes and go home and dream about crashing into cars on my bike, dream against it, dream about piercing people-bubbles and talking about things that rather shouldn't be talked about;

and lately I've been doing this thing where the last two (mild) bike accidents, near-punch and near-mugging I've been in have been so fresh and crisp that I can imagine the sensation of immediate danger arriving too rapidly to to think, the little will-o'-the-wisp of "is this really happening to me?" followed by "yes, it is" happening on one-two-succession, like a rapid punch. bam bam. and then I tumble, and then the world turns about and a hypothetical turns into the cold flesh of reality, and I check myself, reoriented. do I know myself? is my body okay? I've always said, when getting up shakily with adrenaline coursing through my veins, looking at myself. is my body okay? and so far I've been luckily enough to say "yes, it is, it is. you are awarded the invincibility of your youth, again."

the point is that I imagine these things more lately, and I don't think that it comes out from a fright or an apprehensive dread but more of a subconscious will to puncture this invincibility of youth that I live in. a friend recently said more accurately that this invincibility was to take one's body for granted, and I think that's definitely true, and resonated with me, the bodily flesh-and-organ and presence that I have is just here, operating on its own level, being taken for granted. sometime in the future I will call it once in a while, tell it that I love it, send flowers on body's day, visit once in a while, but not enough.

but that itself is another center that comes from an absence-of-a-center, the anticipation of the absence of youth, along with the anticipation of the end of an evening. and yes, the ride back was wonderful, and yes, that image of the tin ceiling painted white stayed with me, for some corporeal tangible reason, and after seeing some wonderful, wonderful friends the ride back is filled with traffic lights (points that elongate into lines) and roads (lines that elongate into volumes), and such and such and such and such.