aSoSS 01 | Numbers

Hey, I appreciate you coming to the gym today.

No problem man. I’m going to be honest, I was really tired today and I don’t think I did well. But you being there really helped me.

No human being can give one hundred percent every day.

That’s true. You gain what you give.

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 8:00PM, 11/11/2023

how easy is it to define the number one hundred? to exert maximum effort at the gym is to repeat a set until your arms start to tremble and the muscles give way. must we live the same way? i imagine you poring over a textbook until your eyes glaze over. maximum effort does not equal maximum success. perhaps maximum success is a function of time, an exponential improvement. a chemical delirium – dopamine or serotonin, what’s the difference? one molecule away from madness // from heartbreak // from shutting yourself out — in — away — behind — above…


I used to work at a flower shop, did I tell you that? That’s why my favorite flower is white lily.

Not roses?

They die too fast. I put them in the fridge and after a few days they start wilting. Don’t ever order roses, they always die. I seen them.

Washtenaw + Pittsfield, 3:00PM, 10/30/2023

the cardinal flower of love, so quick to die! i could spend all summer researching the history and symbolism of flowers. beauty is an interpretation, but so is love, and hate, and passion, and almost every adjective in the dictionary. it’s up to perception, the view from above. you stare at the rose too much and the color drains — from your face, from your eyes — and drips to the dirt. the grass bends to collect the drops. you smile and your teeth are stained scarlet.


How much for this candle jar? Oh, forty percent off? That’s great!

Yeah, we’re trying to get rid of our Halloween inventory now.

I really should get this. My kids will love it. I’m a science teacher, you see, and my last name is Bones, so I try to decorate my classroom with them…

Found Gallery, 11:00AM, 11/4/2023

the world we live in is made up of multitudes. in another universe, i have mr. bones as a science teacher. on the first day of class he gets up and shows us a plastic skeleton. i graduate high school, graduate college, and invite him to my wedding. thanks for teaching me about the cranium, i say. he points to his head, an inside joke — among other things. we laugh and drink brandy and attend each of our children’s sports games. we go to bed and rise and realize that we don’t exist. ’tis but the figment of imagination! i imagine an eighteenth-century playwright scoping out the details of my life. he probes and probes until he feels nothing but flesh and eight spindly legs and a web of memories encased in silk.

a-spider-on-state-street

Real quotes, fictional stories. Let yourself be drawn to the flame of life. Face the sky like there is no tomorrow. Freedom is not measured in years but in the unbridled dance of the soul.

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