Author: a-spider-on-state-street

It’s fine. Whatever happens is meant to happen. Nothing more, nothing less.

East Quad, 2:00PM, 1/11/2024

we are in charge of our fates in a perverse kind of way, in that we circle the inevitable like a marble in a funnel. it is easy to do what is easy, to let gravity take control, to appease the vultures that accompany death, to look back and say that it was going to happen anyway. we only resign ourselves to fate when staring at failure–would we ever attribute our success to the stars? the sky clears and for a moment the earth is sprinkled with starlight: a reminder of magnitudes, of multitudes. nothing more, nothing less.

I don’t know if I can watch a show and go, “that was in the book! That wasn’t in the book!”

EECS Building, 11:30AM, 1/30/2024

i tell myself i would watch an infinite number of realities with you but we both know that’s not true. it is impossible to write a future identical to the book in the same way it is impossible to direct a life identical to a movie. you tell me about your life and i hear you but i don’t listen. shuffle the deck. the tarot reader looks up and then looks away. perhaps she sees everything and perhaps she sees nothing at all. you can always tell when a chapter is about to end. who is to blame, an unreliable narrator or an unforgiving audience?

You’re going to be polite and smile, and let it roll off your shoulders, because that’s life. That’s just how the world works.

Crisler Center Lot SC-5, 2:30PM, 2/23/2024

the rain is black, heavy, foreboding. the magazine betrays a tragic parlance and you stop reading in between the lines because they blur into a single sentence. i turn the page and point to the cartoons, figures distorted from the damp ink. the uncertainty is memorable. i crawl through a tunnel of nostalgia, the sapphires, the jade, the rubies. my heart races from the effort of keeping up. the tunnel ends and i turn back but there is just a pinprick of flame, snuffed out by the rain before i can blink.

That is my biggest pet peeve, dealing with the Sun in my eyes. I can’t do it.

Pierpont Commons, 5:00PM, 2/6/2024

what if the world goes white as it dies? we are taught to fear darkness, undiscernible shapes, figures we cannot recreate. we forget that sight is a blessing, that light is a byproduct of our universal fortune, cast upon by a star too angry to cool, too forgiving to combust. allow yourself to be blinded, like a screen burn-in. the rods and cones permanently fixate on colors that are no longer there. spangles of sun, once streaked with rainbows, now shine mutely. a wavelength of contingencies remain out of sight, but never out of mind.

Ten minutes after I close, I look outside and it’s snowing? Why are people buying ice cream right now??

Couzens Hall, 2:00PM, 3/14/2024

a long time ago i learned to measure the time in increments smaller than seasons. before it was just the summer, a time when i could walk outside and find sweet drops of ice cream dotting the sidewalk. in fall these dots became leaves, and in winter these leaves became snowflakes, which blossomed into sprouts in the spring. there was also a different time of day that the seasons could not measure, an ache that cannot be expressed in words. the sky swirls blue raspberry and the sprouts are strangled by weeds.

i see the clouds fading from vanilla to strawberry to hazelnut to chocolate. tongues do not melt on lips, but i shiver just the same.

You’re ready for cold and it’s warm, you’re ready for warm and it’s cold…

Traverwood Library, 1:30PM, 3/17/2024

the earth does not pause for a second, a marble scarred with the ironies of man. a sorites paradox on the surface: when does the sun give way to cloud, when does the cloud overflow with rain? a single gust of wind, a splash of heat, and the future is completely changed. how can fates be charted beneath a horse’s hoofbeat or a bison’s breath? one or two gives way to band or herd. at a quantum level, the act of observation changes the result–we are simply grains of sand to be brushed away, discarded, glued to the corner of a different piece of the planet.

How is St. Louis? Is it St. Louis-ing? Is it Arch-ing?

Ahmo’s, 6:00PM, 2/1/2024

the metro is a closed loop, a sleeping dragon. you point out one of the buildings, veins throbbing, heavy against the rain; the train squeals against the track and you are robbed of my reply, my sympathies, as if they would do anything but raise the hairs on your arm. what happens when you let stitches sit in too long? your skin shifts, a chameleon in twilight. the sun sets, the skin darkens. the leaf-rot smell of autumn returns, and i know you will not be around to watch the flowers bloom in the spring.

What if I get lost?

You’re not going to get lost, you just need to walk in a straight line. If you get lost, that’s on you.

Markley Hall, 3:00PM, 2/8/2024

the world is full of lines, hard and soft, good and bad. sometimes the world is grayscale, allowing me to sort everything into sets, rigid containers, labeled and discarded. road lines = good. scars = bad. cracks in doorways and mirrors and cement foundations? // then the world resumes in color, and the containers begin to spill. the cracks pile up, multiplying, threatening the edges of my vision. in trying to blend the lines, you erased the figure; in trying to straighten the branches, i destroyed the roots…

Nah, I could barely see it… don’t ask any questions about that night, I don’t remember any of it!

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 1:30PM, 3/3/2024

we have learned to associate lack of memory with a good time. if something went south, we would remember it, right? the brain fills slowly, in hindsight, fabricating memories, forging alliances. you call it breaking down problems with a hammer and a drink. the worst punishment of all: force-fed my own thoughts until i choked them up and spit them out. my reality lives on, isolated, trapped like chac mool: free and fictitious ocean, only real when it imprisons a snail.

I proofread as I go, so it’s fine…but I wrote it at midnight so you tell me!

Pierpont Commons Lounge, 12:00PM, 11/14/2023

there is a perverse form of art in letting go of what you have created. eradication. the disconnect between writer and editor, a nurse ripping a sick baby away from a grieving mother. fatigue brings discontent and discontent accumulates like tar in the liver. my tongue forms a sentence and dies on my lips. my breath carries the corpses, hairs against needles, nails against plastic, floating through the air. is it poetry, or is it unspoken word?

Look, you went from not knowing anything, and you tried, and now you’re killing it!

Tech Shop, 11:00AM, 1/25/2024

goals should be driven by effort. using achievement to measure success is like orienting a telescope at the glare of a mirror. there will come a time where the sun sets and you are left with the shadows of the past. you will forget the sun rises the next morning, beautiful and breathtaking, as you struggle with an eternal night. the easiest way to believe something is permanent is to neglect the future. if you sit and stare at your feet during the train ride, you will think that you have never moved…

You studied, you put in the effort! There are going to be a lot of people in that room who know less than you…

Union Basement, 11:30AM, 2/19/2024

comparison is often the thief of joy, but sometimes we are dealing with a different type of thief. a reverse robin hood, stealing from the emotionally poor and feeding into the rich. what was once seen as a burden can be molded, reversed, shaped into an instrument. an instrument of what? intoxicated by our dreams. empty or not, our emotions still take up space, like a small glass jar wedged in the side of the temporal lobe. fill it up with sunshine and don’t look back.

Put your hands on your hips… one leg up… yeah!

You know how I do it? I don’t even take photos! I take a video and screenshot!

I take live photos!

Ichiban, 7:00PM, 11/11/2023

our strongest memories are linked by sounds and smells. the running exhaust, the radio leaking through the window, the heat gradient running up the side of my arm from the incandescent lightbulb. photos can only take us so far — they are shortcuts, figures without depth or dimension. try committing these words, this moment, this raindrop of time. let it disappear behind the veil. sights, smells, sounds, me and you. point, grip, pull the trigger.

You look at pictures of your relatives and that’s the only thing you know them by… when people only know you through photos, it’s important to be present.

Couzens Hall, 8:00PM, 1/24/2024

there is a bin of photos for sale at the scrap center, fifty cents per stacked inch. they are shaken out of albums and cards, tossed aside, ink yellowing in the sun. i look through them and i imagine you looking with me, behind my shoulder. i have no photos of you — deleted or neglected, i do not remember — but it does not matter. i think about going to art school so i can learn to draw your face. what force flows through a pencil when it etches the subconscious into reality?

Actually, I didn’t show my teeth because I was insecure, so I didn’t smile.

Glen/Catherine Inbound, 12:00PM, 2/18/2024

an insecure mouth suffocates laughter. it is a cinch, a noose, like being shushed as you are strangled. the snaggletooth peeks out and waves to the camera. your eagerness betrays you, but only for a second. your grandparents sit on the top of the fridge, tight-lipped, stone-faced. i’m sorry, you say. what for? i grab your hand as the shutter clicks. carved out of paper, nonetheless, but a smile preserved.