An extra pair of socks placed on the nightstand next to the plant to breathe clean air and not have to go all the way to the dresser to have warm feet not enough room on the nightstand for all the things I would need so I have to get out of bed or else I might sleep all day.

Originally written on: March 3, 2021

I want to have my cake and eat it too when I am feeling pain I don’t want it but when I am feeling pleasure I want it when I am feeling pain I want to get away from the world I want to step out of the cycle but I still can’t detach from the pleasure I believe there’s a different kind of pleasure from a non-worldly life but I am not yet wise enough to have tasted it and also because the world is what I know it is what I was born into and my upbringing shaped me in the cycle of pain and pleasure.

Originally written on: February 28, 2021

While working in the city I’ve found it difficult at times to both keep up at work while also finding time for my writing. Because of this, I started writing during “small pockets of time” like sitting in the back seat of the car on my way to work in the early morning, holding onto the handrail on the bus on the way back home, waiting for the elevator in my apartment building, waiting for a friend at a restaurant, lying in bed at night before falling asleep, etc. During these times, I was still “on the go” and couldn’t sit down to open my laptop or write at a desk with paper and pen, but my iPhone that I always had with me anyways was the perfect tool to record a passing thought. (I know this might sound like an Apple advertisement but it’s really just the authentic story. I tried my best to read into the copyright laws about using the word “iPhone.” Please don’t sue me Apple). Combined with the fact that these moments in time were when I felt most “free” to focus on my writing, while I was also “getting something done” for my personal or professional life. It started as just texting myself with the Messages app. At the very beginning, I was trying to write a novel or short story. So I practiced writing scenes or character descriptions, and then would try to piece everything together on Saturday when I had more time. At some point I realized I was better off just keeping the pieces separate. This was my introduction to poetry. I was capturing very short and specific passing thoughts or a quick snapshot of what my senses were telling me—like looking up at the buildings downtown while waiting at an intersection, or closing my eyes in the car and listening to the traffic noise. The next iteration was using speech-to-text. I noticed there was this little microphone symbol among the keys on the iPhone keyboard. I had seen my dad use it sometimes to send messages for work. I started using this feature to speak my poetry out loud, especially when it was coming too much and too fast for my fingers to keep up on the tactile keyboard. There was also a more natural “flow” from saying the words and hearing them out loud so it was easier to make a correction when the rhythm was a little off. This allowed me to be more productive and contributed to most of the contents of this book. Now that I have had the chance to think about it as a completed project, and more removed from the natural way that its production came about, I think there are very interesting ideas about how our technology understands us and allows us to communicate with one another. I have often texted a friend and thought that the conversation could be dialogue for characters in a story. Further, I wonder about the stream of consciousness that everyone has naturally, and if technology could capture it. In producing the contents for this collection, it was often my goal to let my thoughts flow as seamlessly as possible—from what came in through my senses, and back out through my words, whether spoken or typed. I wonder if the human error, of my experience being translated into words, could be removed, and the experience could be translated directly. The same could be done for other art forms: a movie playing exactly what someone sees, or a soundtrack playing exactly what someone hears. Anyhow, here are those thoughts and experiences to which I have referred, recorded and copied by the methods I have described.

it seems so easy to lay here in bed all day satisfied without any green a.m. to get my melted body out from one of the sheets baby cooking in the other room sun kept out by shades in the 8 PM longest day of summer nobody knows how long to stay awake Orbis melting there late into the cracks into the hundred thousand apartments curated for mankind to invade a peninsula with their buildings and restaurants and cars and stoplights and commerce

letting words just run as they will waking up the mass of clay as haphazardly as thrown on the pedestal from bank to open late but not mattering just to have a starting point and at least get something out in the open deck and then be shaped and refined by careful eyes needing just something to work with and doing the refining no matter why so better to have it out haphazard and just get a start rather than nothing at all and refining thin air and making the mind sick by refining itself for lack of anything else

slipped into the corner where two walls meet the ceiling the most comfortable place in the room if not for where the same two walls meet floor and all dust bunnies eventually meet on their way to the broom Like Travellers going along in the wooden floor cracks being born from a gathering of the shedding rug and meeting other masses form from the same place but having traveled different journeys  

baby playing music in the next room cooking dinner chopping peppers I can hear the blade on the cutting board I can hear your music L being nice to me well I still try to sleep lazy in the next dark room hangover from being high all day and surprisingly napped a long time but now I can have energy to lean up And talk to my phone about baby cooking in the next room

everything I am feeling right now actually felt by the five senses and I thought up or redefined on my stomach pillow thing textile covering from my bellybutton to the bottom of my ribs and the bed covered by a sheet slightly depressed based on the shape of my body supporting my whole body perfectly comfortable mattress designed to be supportive The back of wanna go more so my heel on top of my other foot inside of the elbows keeping the pillow in place on either side index finger and middle finger of left hand and pointer finger and thumb and middle finger finger in the back holding my phone in front of my face I was taking in the words on the screen watching the bars of the speech to text bounce up-and-down as I speak looking at at the blue and black and red and pink and a different shade of red and a different shade of blue and gray and white and blue all on the phone screen and shapes rectangles mostly in some circles and a few triangles that are really arrows and the time on top with too much information already even in addition to the battery life with 79% left in the time ETA 7 PM and the music in the next room. in my ears hey Slobey sounding like a part in my own voice in my ears as I speak this into the phone the noise of trashcan opening as baby throws away while cooking dinner and now the sound of the sink running over her hands in the water gurgling in the drain and the ripped paper towel crunch between her hands drying her hands a package opening maybe the meat. maybe a baggy to cover the honey container that she said was leaking this morning and the rest of the room in my eyes really so much to describe the light coming in early between the shades still light at this time because it is the longest day of the year June 22 in the bed beneath me and the pillow over me like it’s on my vision below and the light coming in to the doorway the visa the kitchen where babies cooking and books out of the left corner of Mayeye not moving much. to try to keep the experiment the same experiencing the same thing really so much all at once is the point so much to keep noticing and keep talking into the phone and never run out of things to notice and talk about if you really look deep down like the rug underneath the table that holds the box or the couch before the table that is gray and woven with some white threads to be a lighter gray in the ceiling that is painted the same color beige but maybe different colors by the light a glare just to the left of the ceiling light and darker colors of beige where the shadow is  more thick and and even in almost blackness where there is a ledge between the walls and the ceiling that keeps out the light giving a border black to the beige ceiling and an archway to the right where you walk in from the front door and barely a scene of the bathroom door with shadow through the archway through the open door of the bathroom and a light switch around the corner of the Archway right next to a mirror that reflects what I saw on the left side with the table in the books and me in bed riding covered with a pillow on my stomach and all of that being just what i see. using my eyes this whole time adding Noring what I could say I feel like myself and my trousers or my thighs against each other or even my bones inside of my muscles if I really focus enough reason my stomach and intestines inside my belly and my arms where they crease to hold my phone in front of my face or my hair is against the pillow and the backs of my ears just barely touching the pillow and not even what I hear now like the brakes for the truck breaking outside as it stops for the stop light in the rubbing of a motorcycle engine like a chopper and still the voice of that singer a new singer now I think more acoustic and baby quaking a spoon against glass in the click of a lighter lighting a candle I move my head to look at her breaking the experiment but seeing her have a good body making it worth it and I am moving my feet too and rubbing my skin together and have you forgot spell being one that I really notice. unless there is something wrong or something good smelling like food or flowers it mostly smells like air and the taste is also one that I pay attention to last more the feel of my tongue in my mouth in this thick saliva after having woken up from a nap and having smoke before I fell asleep but the tasting not much other than thinking of the food baby is making for us and how that will taste like it has tasted before and feeling being pretty powerful so I guess in order at his site and sound first and then feeling and then smell and taste last and then also there is thinking only about senses if you can manage it but also a Over a whole other world of thinking about other things and creating concepts that are mostly derivatives of senses that one point but also another world where language keeps itself and mix it itself so that I wake up with phone sometimes or feelings faster and mix together and make actions at some point and unknown ideas and creativity‘s come from nothingness so there must be something there other than just the senses And a whole other exercise could be done just in the thinking

A piece of art it would be to have everything on edited and Mia just talking into my phone about real things and leaving it just as it comes out first of all the way I say it but also the way the technology interprets it which has something to do with our modern times I think and what my results from human things rendered into technology but in someway still being human and even made more human by the speed and efficiency which which technology delivers things like language and art and connections between people so that practically this piece. altogether by the way pausing now to know that when there is a period like that it is because the phone stopped using the microphone and I have to click the button again and the inserts that. Which just showed up as punctuation when I said the word for the grammar or the punctuation point for it. I mean back to what I was saying about this piece altogether is a 24-year-old man from Kansas talking into the speech to text function. and his iMessage with the screen cracked on the left side and spiderweb being across but if you are the type to read into things more there are many things to be right here about a life and Art and how those two are rendered through a piece of technology but that not being the point for me to pigeonhole your experience of almost feeling bad for usSo in the interest of leaving things on edited I will leave it there but wishing now that I would have just said this is me talking into my iPhone and left it at that and let it be whatever it will be for any reader because me and her been my own art makes a very lonely world rather just make it and let it be and see what happens so here you go

almost not wanting to stop now talking so much and getting on a roll having it all out but not knowing what is good and thinking there might be a limit order so much becomes an editable and it would’ve been better off trying to get something good at the start rather than throwing out a mediocre mass in hopes of refining to good just so that there’s something to work with but really needing some good to start for anything good at the end but still cathartic at least and good to have it all out so talking still and letting it flow so the only reason to startJust start is to get up and do something else I make sure baby is it mad at me for making her cook while I sit here and talk like a madman on my phone

this guy piecing all together just to try to get it all out at once so to be more honest and divined into one time that doesn’t change as much I was dragging it on over more time that makes different man making the heart and so I charged you or blessing you are to have the maker rendered overtime and so change the peace and making it impossible to create a whole piece of a whole feeling all at once like one big red splash of paint or one I know just how they’re the same as a moment That doesn’t change unless drive down overtime like all the world just been one point and one thing without any differentiation if not for time that stretches out space and devise it in color is it in shape so it gives it sound and other food for senses but really starting this just to stay that I’d rather write 100 pounds all at once and get it out into this book so it is actually an honest snapshot of a man rambling on and hopefully having something good out of the mass but as long as the mass is made in a way that keeps to the same point that shows something not shown before that it was done it’s job

So many words can be sad like this after and after each other just on and on I keep yapping and make me so much that I do before when I sit down and really react my van brain and toss out so many options just to find something good and then when I have something that I think in my mind there is a password from when I put it down the paper and some is forgotten and then it becomes different when seeing it on paper and affects the next line is that this is different to just talk on and on and let it go completely unedited coming out of my mind and letting it affect it in different ways without fear for being able to follow

getting out of bed to talk to baby while she’s cooking dinner for me just to make sure she’s all right and also telling her about this idea to keep talking to the phone and keep this project cohesive and hopefully make something modern but also telling and revealing of how I can get us closer to an honest form of art with stream of consciousness and really into what her mind is thinking and she said OK so thankful for her to be cooking and now me back in bed continue to talk to my phone like a madman like I said earlier and hoping not to run out of things to say but wanted to stop this one together my thoughts little bit and think about the next one

thinking a little too much about it now. Something I do with my family tree anyway which is just to let random words together like creeping back quietly into the fire alarm ceiling sky keeping in the dark and blues outside and cons wearing in a depressed chest underneath a concave pillow kept inside sheets and walking down the stairs outside where is the last safe as of the apartment but also if the other possibility which is the theme for life to leave safety in order to get something good like an animal that must leave it’s habitat or cave rather for food like a bat we saw on the TV show that leaves. It’s a cave to catch bugs at the risk of being caught in itself by a hawk. Admittedly use my fingers to edit a hawk there because it’s at our and somewhat regretting it but now including in the peace having said it that there I made a fax with my fingers

self-conscious of how they sound and if there any good but thinking also that I might be kept shallow by these thoughts so trying to think deeper again about the feelings and the site and the sound that I started with like the water boiling in the kettle for baby not knowing really what she boils water for being that the rice is already heated on the stove maybe she’s making tea but I digress from my actual feelings like my hand on top of the sheet and the sheet on top my stomach and my feet still crossed over so my physical feeling stays relatively the same last I go into my mind and close my eyes and think about grass and nothingness above the grass and ends. my eyes closed so not saying that the phone had stopped recording I was talking about Winnie the Pooh and a beach ball baby calling me hold on maybe Rakesh me talking about him yeah let’s use all of it it’s only like less than a pound she asked me about how much steak we should use for dinner which reminds me at the grocery store when we asked for it it was precut stirfry steak and when the butcher put it on the scale it was only .87 of a pound and I asked for a pound of .87 was enough his baby and I are trying to eat less meat like a lot of people in San Francisco that I’ve caught on to it not being so good for you or for the environment and hearing the meat see you’re now on the cast-iron skillet that baby is fond of it you don’t have to wash it and it retains the flavor of past meals and closing my eyes again but worrying about the phone not typing no matter what see how far we can get with the tree but this I think for us by me trying to think of something really seeing the black of my eyelids and light shapes that fill the black me opening my eyes just to check that the phone is still typing needing to stop this one to start a new one so that I can be confident it will go for a while and really catch with my eyes closed

OK now I’m starting a solid stream without self-consciousness with my eyes closed seeing the black in no shape yet but noticing a texture in the black are there on the small white Dodge that make it more light and there is a difference with how close my eyes at her and how light the black is but really just seen black if only looking at the physical until I realize I can look into my mind Zai and see other things like a rope swing from the tree or some store or a light tower or things created by fours but somehow not being able to control what comes up opening my eyes now to check sending this one to do another

eyes closed again now focusing through my mind Zai and not just the physical violence like I said before seeing a plane or rather a concept of a plane not actually seeing it but thinking of it and wondering where that thinking happens trying to see you now actually a canna Plato with an orange lid and a hand smashing the lid and a hammer come out from the word smashing on the workbench that reminds me of my dad and my association with a hammer and a workbench and now my home in the basement door that was next to my dad‘s workbench that leads into the basement and there is stairs on the right. to go up into the living room or continue through the hallway and be in the basement with a bathroom immediately to the right and my brothers bedroom door in front of you and the rest of the basement to the left with a small workout room for me and my four brothers or the TV that is really the centerpiece of the basement where we go to relax and I’ll lounge around on the couch and so reliving being in my childhood home I heart beating with blood now as I try to think of something else looking like a kid and even not that I know much of her organs look like a deer thinking of it looking out as I have seen in videos when they hear the crack of the gun

Good smells now like I mentioned earlier about smell not being a dominant sense but becoming so dumb it when one is hungry and baby is cooking something good in the other room the steak I think or maybe the range that I’m smelling not having a defined nervous but knowing for sure when something smells good especially when I am hungry

back into the minds eye to see what we can conjure but getting to stay active he is wanting to be with baby and getting hungry and hearing the skateboard outside but also wanting this piece to exist with enough content to be what I imagined it to be so thinking in the mines dying of a scooter maybe because of the skateboard wrapping on sidewalk cracks and feet with sneakers pushing it in the cost of the chains on top of the sneakers at a bus stop where the senior citizens way like baby has told me about when she travels back from work through Chinatown in the bus wheels on the cement imagining the big white rectangle is painted between sidewalks. To give pedestrians a place to crash through street where cars pass and traffic lights keep everything orderly so people don’t die from car crashes every day with so much going and amazing that it can be kept orderly and a city has so many peoples with her own emotions stacked on top of each other and kept in line by Ruisch and paper and money and lights separated by so little as a red that means stop and a green that means ago that we were all agreed-upon

Getting somewhere now really achieve inquired ever received from Lange so I’m in bed I miss spoke there now I lost my train of thought having misspelled oh yes I was going to talk about getting somewhere from just a start as long as you can start with anything whether it be a color or any word or anything at all really like the fire alarm on the ceiling that I was talking about earlier and now thinking about fire and imagining the fire that Ford and I had by the river maybe shouldn’t have said sports name maybe should’ve called him baby or no baby because baby is baby but maybe a friend or brother bear or brother to protect his identity so calling him brother now me and brother by the fire next diversion over in Utah where we sat in the river all day and really a hot day on the sand of the beach by the camping resort where we stayed in the river really rushing and saying before we started the day in the morning that we should not get in the river but by noon both of us chest deep in the river having the greatest time sitting on the stones in the middle talking and letting the water rush over our backs especially with the sun being so high and high in the sky the river was the necessary counterpart To keep us on the beach all day from sunup to sundown and really now thinking more of concepts as opposed to having my eyes closed and reliving the senses that experience

Maybe it is not necessary to have this all done in tonight maybe I can let it go for now realizing that the piece might be more wine if I take the same lines to different moments rather than just laying in bed on this one night but maybe still keeping all these pieces together to give the piece of*it’s of the ideas there and notating the times but still having separate pieces that need not run on all together but can be marked by date and time and still certain time and place by my words if I’m careful to explain

keep after it keep after it keep on keep going like this since I got hold on baby calling meantime your food is ready see if it will capture how many more minutes baby veggies are still seeming she says seven minutes OK do you mind if I keep talking for seven more minutes yeah she says just giving you a heads up but now I’m back to thinking to keep after it like the trip by the river when the sun was out and we really thought we were after some thing crunched over notebooks writing onto the pages staying as long as we could on the beach and resisting the cold cool river Just to keep writing this is like that we’re here it is in this moment in this moment will only ever be right now a little after eight on June 22 and the 24th year of my life with baby here and everything going good and having been a little high all day in this moment seeming to matter so much driving my hair with my left hand and almost being overwhelmed with that but still knowing that I need to keep talking to keep Cab Shane in order to have a drill down into one point like I talked about earlier otherwise it could spread out and differentiated like everything else and is an allowed to be itself because of time and space and everything else that changes what is actually having the in religious and ethereal if left to be alone in touch but everything else like this

Good God or after eight now getting into it and really seeing past what really makes my eyes were talking straight into the a Bolivian that exist when I close my eyes usually and now needing to keep it in the words and not almost go crazy and talk about too much other stuff where if we really takeoff now the word start to fill fail I mean and I really am only just feeling in so get too far away but what can be worded and almost dying to stumble with my words and just mumbling now because I feel it so much and really don’t have anything to contain and then gripping the hair with my left hand Tyler and really like a train off the wheels now going after a good God there are no words for this or maybe my vocabulary lax and I’m really just trying to talk so fast just to get it out but even the speed of my language is an enough now good God the climax oh my goodness like being on a drunk high right now or you’re really

Keeping it on going in singing in starting in China to artificially keep the emotion but just let it flow even though I had to stop there to start a new text and press the microphone button and that someone interrupted but now I’m feeling the engine start to read it again with only a break or five seconds or so I can pretty much keep up with the same stream of thought that I had before but still not feeling it as much so slightly returning to the word world where I start to pay attention again to the base ceiling with the fire alarm in the dark practice between the ceiling and the largest of the walls that keeps a shadow black ordering the beige healing and not wanting to talk so much about the design of the room but get lifted back into the space where I was going after it and talking so fast and sewing down a little bit now. and realizing I have to let things be what they were in the moment and just let them be and not try to re-create them so shifting the legs and letting my pastor relax and sit back and be a little more calm and open to whatever might come close in my mind Zai to think of a leprechaun which is the mascot for where I went to university but now seeing a darker polygon I think it is like a square with its two side shifted Way over and opening my eyes to make sure the phone is still typing and recording what I’m saying probably four minutes left now as baby told me seven minutes probably three minutes ago for dinner is almost over and I feel bad because I told her I would help her cook but didn’t get on this mad rush talking to my phone through speech to text and wondering if this will be the same as the charger and also I’ve done before and where they feel to be so good in them. To have this all out almost too honest open and on edited and if people will like it and being self-conscious about it but this being the real art I believe to have it so naked and so honest and true the on edited for everything else is just like the rest of the world and not Erich because the rest of the world also starts as art as route human emotion and motivation to survive and love and fuck and succeed and gain power and hope and be together and all these things in the real world crystallized into economies and papers and edges and words and computers and bills so letting it really exist outside of that world and be on edited and non-commercial and not even Really meant for another to see so keeping it so honest

The messaging app in my phone is starting to malfunction I wonder if this is more taxed and more volume than it’s used to handling and hoping that the memory won’t run out or delete all the tax but still keeping going probably only two minutes left now since baby told me five minutes ago that it would be seven minutes before dinner is ready and so talking on to capture everything I can before a deadline closing my eyes now to see a frog on a Lillypad croaking slowly rolling over the water not green more of a concept I guess that is a Fagge but I can’t really see it and now thinking of an umbrella on the beach and reminding me of my trip to Cabo with other friends whose name starts with cheese and other friends whose name starts with you and being out on the beach and the man trying to sell us some drugs and the security man from the beach talking to him about it and keeping them out on the beach and not coming into the resort after us and being self-conscious now anything I might see a natural stream of thoughts that is not appropriate for public or should not be sad but wondering what conversations that would create if everyone really just read into speech to text the actual thought so that we came to the table to discuss and decide what is best all her thoughts were out there and sad and we could really have an open honest conversation about what should be done about it rather than only half the thoughts of even less than that being said that one actually feels and so having a conversation only about half the things that need to be talked about to really solve the issues at the root

Phoebe says it’s ready and I can tell her voice so be mad at me if I don’t find out so I better go leave this for now hopefully it’s enough

so much god and all my nothing explains or contains this what word have i really none at all to hold on to what passes staying long enough only to overwhelm me and fill its space with the same poetry that Schopenhauer claymores after with his philosophy for existence is beyond what physical lens we have that emotions break from another world that collides for the two lenses we’ve got goodness ethereal sublime words that contain every other word

walking away from dirt in the cracks sewer metal pole up into the sky squares of dirt for trees to sit in that don’t belong here for the shade trees cast on sidewalks walked all the leftover leaves scrambling to make it back out their trunks for flowers in pots that preferred domestic lives two gates open in neighborhoods safer than 10 miles to the west or the east I don’t know cars parked along every curb making curbs almost unnecessary

The accuracy of the noiselessness almost uncanny to have my words not buffered by assuming mistakes a helicopter overhead walking on the sidewalk so hearing so much the wind and the leaves that isn’t as loud as the motorcycle revving but light that paints houses not as colorful in the dark quiet now in a nicer neighborhood focusing without fear as my hair blows and my shirt sleeves blow

higher up closer to my subconscious mind uneven like the steps sideways on the side of the house the nearest to stay straight and 90° on incline sidewalks remaining normal according to gravity and all else that ties the physical world down into what it is staying the same for us to be able to predict and go on living without making dying mistakes

her waiting for me to walk away and talk to myself so as to avoid the self-consciousness that comes with the writing out loud in front of other people and hoping the spoken word stays natural as it comes to your heart when your hearts right and your mind did not do any of the writing except for getting in the way and trying to edit prematurely but really not helping the heart right after what it surely knows

struggling to get past this/old into that color list colorful non-physical dream religion God drug night other besides a world where things just flow and melts and go together and don’t choose sides or decide or define but just leave things to run as they would have without any help anyway such that the world would be without

pushing the limits now past having too much to even make sense of any part of it without seeing the trees for the forest or the clouds for the sky or any discretionary part of a modeled mass large enough to be itself and then goals everything else that would’ve been another but now only contributed a part not even recognized though not all together uneasy at least to belong

writing speech to text like this letting it go as it naturally would without having to take time to let my editing mind wonder about what is right but really just saying and being alone and letting her mind go as it always goes and goes and goes without stopping unless they hear about stopping in so I was still thinking in someway but give it an hour if I can only keep talking in writing maybe I’ll empty it all one day

So sleek similar to shampoo rinsing out of your hair like this on between your fingers and the rubber tire patched up against the cement curb trying so hard to be where it belongs as long as his car stay on the roads and people stay on the sidewalks and everything remains in its place and nothing unexpected or Turner to quickly then we can all get along with an order an expectation of things

Nonsense so consistently I wonder if it even begins to mean anything or remains just as it is everything outside of sens like to? Beyond the supposable outer pound of the ever expanding universe universe

Standing on the street corner she asked where do you want to go I stand there and think of all the possibilities and then say to her i want to stand right here thinking of all the possibilities

Leaving her to write is a theme that extends beyond just the practicality avoiding her presence to let my self consciousness dissolve but also stands between the conflict of letting everything go into my heart versus being with her and focusing and settling down

Sleepy somber sweet time notes leaving longer knee-high modes making mostly meager half times seeking timbre needle thick lines Needing no more they say her lies sending after chemical half lives