no, one is not sure, one is never sure, until one is absolutely and positively sure, until the full force of absolute solidity and conviction hits you; and then you must, or it always has, but after, just only after you crossed the epsilon-thick threshold.

summer will come, no doubt, and with it will come the smell of late-night rain, of newly open streets, of new rooftops, new neighborhoods, new bike lanes to learn, new modes of being. a new skyline out my window, glittering in the distance, cars passing by. projects to come. the smell of green in the air, evening barbeques, the muffled thump of a baseline in the distance, the loose yell of kids, sunsets, bike rides, late nights at bars, that kind of thing. a walk home from the subway station, alone. sitting in a darkened room with a light, wondering.

(if there's any interior space that has quite possibly changed my being it is that one loft space in chinatown, that one studio space, somehow the perfect encapsulation of activity and longing for an immaterial future or an intangible concept. the best way I can describe it is like the space between two sides of a piece of paper on which the most life-changing of words lie. what is there? what happened on that page? can you touch your fingers to the texture of pulp-pressed-flat and trace out the history and the origin of those words? of course not. but the smell of the paper is undeniably another kind of archaeology, maybe even a fictional one that has turned real. the space of a darkened studio, light in the distance, bulbs hanging.)

in the midst of that is a question of presence, of circles. questions. either the hard questions have hard answers, or there are no answers and so the selection of an answer itself is hard. or the answer is just to move, move, move, operate, move forwards. "sorry, that's what I chose, let's just plunge ahead." sometimes it is like that. sometimes it is not.

I am not sure. it comes down to that: I am not sure about ________________. what that means is about my relationship with the future; I am not sure I will not have regretted that I ________. I may. I may not. underlying all of this is a hesitation towards fixity, perhaps. indelible markers. when irrevocable change is your medium, what's your message? do you plunge forth and continue brashly? do you hold still, move in infinitely minute increments? neither, I hope. I am talking about something specific here, really.

...sharp, like a cleaving wedge, like a chisel, scalpel, the fin of a shark in waves.