#99

Square at the gym with Erica. The grid of tread, and bike, and climb. Looks, bobbing heads. The mats and such on which they lay and lean. Accustomed. The changing room's unhung with mirrors. And the boy at the coffee stand: 24 with a 19 year-old girlfriend. Peanuts, dates, and soy - the blender. A fifty-cent piece in his jar.

Exit, and enter the novel with Stephen. Spiked hair, torn-off Coil t-shirt, a camouflage bomber jacket. Cross round his neck perhaps. Or sewn on the arm of his jacket. "The bloom of youth won't last forever, Stevie." Putting the plastic cup to his lips. And they walk, at least this much is certain, from South to Lombard or from 7th to 8th. Whole Foods or the 12th Street deli. From where is the better place to stand? Square with his protein bar returns. Says, "Let us eke go."

On my way, through the City of Cities to cover.

Otherwise, we are wise to take things slowly. Jot and jip and jew. A haircut, 451 dollars on clothes. It's never too late to refashion. Scratch and simper, the past. Call it Simon's simple simony. A testcase to study. To do and/or to question. Adrian 1 in the midst of sex. What is left with Les in Las Vegas. See, this screen is not a mirror; this mirror is a screen. First line: "They had met at South and 7th Street." Then follow. Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow, folllll-lowwwww.

#98

On the phone. Leave that off. I imagine day 6 (or is it day 5?) as a lipstick trace of Armageddon. That band at Houston Hall, "The Beasts": ten horn players and a drummer who struggles to be heard beneath the din. Luke. Our false prophet there with his twin (a pair of prophetae), and the masks their students wear. brtlghh, brtlghh, brt. The Millennium. A scene where one see from all angles. And Adrian 2 serves coffee. Roaches. Scones.

Am I moved to be inch-deep in women? The digression that is, or the root. Some, in the field, have their brothers ahead. But on winter evenings... Studies. Then map out every length of their passage. And Sarah to get stoking the Saint's ire: "The libraries should be burned. And only the things people know by their heart would survive." Pour a gin, pour a brandy. Nothing is as it seems that day. Not the one, not the two, not the three queers in sandals to usher in Jerusalem.

#97

Gloves and hat, collar up, cramped chin. A thousand things to read and know. Or the rough lines of black above my upper lip, and the costume yet to follow. Coffee please, and sonnets. My makeshift reading chair lighted by the sun. "An Investigation of the Effects of Rock Music Videos on the Values and Self-Perceptions of Adolescents." Azazel is impatient for my stillness. So is Stephen, when I am.

Jeehyun - white blouse, round earings - gives a gam: prosthesis. And Julie, bless her soul, has crashed. I've a paper to write on impotence, an acquaintance to punish in fiction. The evening's potential for warmth. Slippers, jackets, sleep. By God, the plot has thickened. But a working title, no. I should pin myself for a caption.

#96

Oh, those free spirits. Square with his hand to the sun. Sarah with eyes and ears for Andy. Today, the bleak clouds give way to winter light. The wind draws a stiff line on maps pinned down. I've purchased olive oil, pre-made turkey meatballs. I've strayed towards the frames of cafe windows. No: it's the only word with meaning.

Peaks and valleys form the story's grand geography. Travaille. The climactic scene of Christ on cross, the brown horizon mammoth underneath. It's Circe's chapter, every one. Or every word that's Stephen's secret. Even, in his rain-smirched trousers, Adrian has his route to follow. Slim fingers struggling with the keys. Silence beside the practice-room door.

"We absolutely refuse disciples." A joke between the Esses. We want youth. All that the 21st century remembers.

#95

Repairing for the after-life. White sun. White nerves that herd in previous patterns, remember. The voice. Alight in ordered sounds and dimmed. Red, red rises. The figurative or that which looks not well in words of mine. Here, the hair that's browned. The heir to grey or bald tomorrow, here. We loafe, we loll. We rear in even turns tomorrow. And for - I say! - the after-thanks. Ear to ear, and through. My eyes each open, black, in taking.

Oh boy, the shelter! Nickeled and named in soft through-light. S'no cupidity. Loans and living, ay. A red, red letter rises. A grant, at least, the back of bricks and wood. And am I long and green in growing? Beneath a seal or down. On roof. That's off, that's quoted. There above you, high. *Signal* post, and sign.

#94

Held high, or low, the chin in contemplation. And the sloping side of mattress-love. Says: "Many many words to tie into the starting-point of now-we-are." Flares the sun, off snow, flashback, and a handy visor. Act like Actaeon beholding hornily. Sebaceous prominence. The itch of the head: enigma. Saturday, I'm afraid, was Stephen's. But Sunday, you were soft as Sarah. Brother, may I have this lance? Oh, I tire of the fragement: I will not keep it up.

#93

The work, with the coming snow, must be widespread like a canvas. Stop. And go. Day 1, of maps and such that wander. S and S in step: loop, part loop, and recombine. Cheese and berry danish, say. The latest issue of The Wire (?). Destinate. Or perhaps they find double-you leaving. Spot another on the way.

Blanks. A regular series in which to draw conclusions. As JMR once put it, "Start at Chapter 9 and read backwards and forwards." Andy retold this; I remember. A kind of doubled symmetry.

And then there's alchemy. Lora's secret symbol. Many wards and such. The records refashioned as bowls. It's my past in which she lives: 2020 Fairmount, the downstairs door. Look up and you'll see me, bare form against the sky. Azazel at my feet, familiar.

One more thing to add. The logical word invites an audience. The particular sign describes transcendence. It's not the Cage that he imagined. Shrere - (............) - srhun, bpum (..). You hear an arrow, and a horn held down. Michael, who flew from name to name, a honeyed bee in pointed turns. Outside the window, in Lora's garden. In the grander scheme, the white spaces between the signs still showing. Jennie feeds her hermit crab. With a ruler, Greg props the sprawling tomato plant. And there's noise from the stairs beneath. Oh, the seconds, reiterating as if single, long, and thickly framed. It is not for suffering that we move as such, but boredom. And the stairs: BAM, BAM, BAM.

#92

Sarah's painting on its little easel. She finds, amidst the city's worn geometry, her natural subjects. And I find mine, though their forms are at times too solid and their speech in too large a space projected. "You write like this," says Square, "because you've been reading Lawrence." His hands are softer, steady, and thrust in pockets as he walks. He has no need of charms or spirits.

Winter-ing. Thin air and the hasty arch of light. I zip my black jacket to my chin. What of the train cars' regular shuffle, the long, low breath of the distant interstate? Had I a man's fair form... I might stand shaving in red, the click of the camera a soft, gentle presence. Or the morning sun through the window in a cross-like pattern, my fingers stuggling with the buttons of a dress shirt.

The wind is its own sad enclave. In February. And David who braves it. Dress him in specks of snow, and lead him to the city gates. Fill his hands and eyes with expectations, great and pocket-size.

#91

#90

A and B in stacks. Day 2. Parapluie in hand. Open gamp, and maybe B is P. Bubbles like a backed-up drain. And. Modern thought tends elsewhere. And. The thin white cords from his pocket to ear. "Hump and dump." Provenance, Stephen, who doesn't keep a carrel. Silently, in jacket. Quarrel.

Open, *tinhg*! And Adrian makes his entrance. Head to toe in clinging clothes, a puddle in the elevator behind. And "Boys..." He rubs his glasses on his sleeve. "I am absolutely incapable of telling you whether it has rained. I live so resolutely apart from physical contingencies that my senses no longer trouble to inform me of them." Andy's laugh: a tilt in the left corner of his lips, and the corresponding eyebrow cocked.