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Still she circled round and round his head much like he seemed to be circling this world, but he wondered no he knew that she wasn't as oblivious to her environment as he was to his and that she doesn't even like ice cream because she didn't get any when he was with her. And he asked if she could see any misery as she passed by but there wasn't anyone to answer him way up here. So he concluded by himself that if she didn't need any ice cream and he didn't see her need anything else (in fact all she did was stare at him with those brown eyes of broken borders that he thinks he likes but deep inside he knows he does) that she probably doesn't see any misery when she looks down. But he knew he had misery. "I have plenty of misery, misery lives up here with me". He was tired and needed sleep although it took forever for him to convince himself to shut his eyes (but he didn't know why) and once he did it was very hard for him to get them open once again (you know how that wind is). But then he decided that it didn't really matter if he opened his eyes ever again because he's seen the world, every latitude and longitude of it a billion times over (and quite frankly was sick of it). So close his eyes he did. DREAM "I think you know what we mean..." What? Big booming circles of color all around the same variation of a single color and I can't stand the sight of red and it knows that so it puts me in a world colored like blood with a Crayola (I remember "brick red" flowing from a hole in the bad guy's chest and the teacher being a nun was angry and ripped my masterpiece to shreds and stomped on it as well as my heart or ego because I thought it was a nice picture!) everything being a variation of a color of red...blood everything was oozing life animation and feeling emotion. And it was overbearing/overwhelming like remembering the funeral of a close friend or relative that you were to attend but did not and knowing that all you will ever see of that person is an etched lettered marbled portrait in that outdoor gallery where freaks go at night to be gothic? And the loss hits you and I want to cry to explode in natural but now I am in a room blood red as the rest with a door in front and a little girl. "Dream a little dream of me" A man sung the voice in a background not completely real but styrofoam? But the girl was not red she was not like everything (not like the color of his insides and that was important). Her hair was gold and her eyes were brown and I loved her but I didn't know why? "Dream a little dream of me" I don't like that song and I think that and I see a big circle of red and hear a bang like a vocal cord exploding but I've never heard that before so I'm not really sure? But then again I am aren't I. There is another me in front of me holding the hand of the little girl but it's not a little girl anymore it's the woman who bought me innocence and I still love her but it's the other me who is feeling the love and not me. So I ask myself (is this not my beautiful wife?) why and they (me and the woman) both say: "I think you know what we mean" and they say it over and over again over and over and I want to yell stop but I can't? And the woman who I love reaches over and puts her hand into my other self's chest and pulls out my heart real slow with that squishing noise you get when you play with cold raw ground meat but only this was my warm whole beating heart (well not mine but my other self's mine). And she pulled it all the way out and she said "I know what's inside" and she kissed my heart like a newborn baby (you know how slimy and mucky they are) and put it back into my chest and I smiled, so I thought that it must have been good. And fragments of songs float all around the room coming in and out like old friends or old lovers in the process of a new self discovery. "love slowly stripped away" New vocal cords and I like the song so I don't think bad things to do to them. And I felt Something funny kind of mushy and gushy and warm inside the middle of my chest so I looked up to see that I wasn't standing in front of me anymore, and that I was facing the other wall in this red red room (redrum?). So I looked to my side and golds and browns were smiling at me and I knew the gushymushywarm feeling must be love but I hated it so I ran. "The human body can run on sugar alone...god damn it" And he ran and ran even though run was not used in that sense. Down long red hallways and through large red courtyards and he saw other people around him but they were also red, and not meaning Indian...He caught glimpses of their conversations mainly old men with deep red wrinkles talking about a past...All these snatches of dialogue sounded vaguely familiar but of course I wasn't really thinking about it so I couldn't quite place it. In a red courtyard (big in the middle of this concrete maze with red palms and red bushes and red grass and paths and everything else) was a table and two chairs and on the tabletop was an old marble chess set and I knew I had to play (not just because I wanted to but) because it was not red like the rest. The white pieces shone white and the black pieces shone black, and the chairs and table were a rich rosewood. A mist was whispering and climbing through the trees and bushes and the grass and everything else was a cloudy murky red. I'm still, sitting in a chair, calm thinking but sharing my thoughts and not voluntarily. The chess set in front of me on the table, a game in progress. I knew I was playing but not my opponent so I looked up to see who it was. An old man looked back at me, stared at me with hollow brown eyes. There were thin wisps of grey hair on his mostly bald head and an obvious weight upon his brow. I looked at the board (I was playing black) to see where I was and noticed that everything was completely the same. If I made a move (pawn to queen six) my opponent made the same (pawn to queen six). I sat for hours with this man (he strangely looked vaguely familiar) and tried to play a game of chess every move was duplicated, every piece taken was taken again. I didn't think this was possible. It was obvious there would be no winner. I looked up at the man "Now baby I got it here to give, but if you won't receive it there's just nothing I can do...Wind in bushes and bird piping...A haughty cloud ship, becalmed...I dream of my youth...As something knowable man appears in his manifold empirical aspects...Thank you as always little 6655321...If it \[the thing a greater than which cannot be conceived\] can be conceived at all it must exist...Shit o dear...I know a girl, a girl called party girl..." He said all these things to me, things that were unfamiliar and distant but had a strange knowledgeable taste to them. I knew these things were valuable to him and might even be to me. And just as the game went on for hours did the same fragments he was telling me as if from some strange new holy book or old re-interpreted? But his eyes were still mud but when he stopped speaking small little sapphires surfaced in the brown pools and came to until all the brown mud was gone. But the blue didn't stop and it flooded from his eyes horizontal in beams that seemed to wash over not just the room but EVERYTHING. And it was like water but like light at the same time flooding all over but not in a splashy way with droplets and all. But soon it was too bright, the blue, and I had to shut my eyes but when I did I could see through my eyelids that all was dark, so I opened them again, them being my eyes. And with every inch I opened my eyes (but not real inches mind you) the room glowed brighter and brighter, but not too bright this time. And by the time my eyes were open all the way I was treated to a softly glowing blue courtyard and as I looked around my eyes fell on the old man and I noticed he glowed death blue (a shade found nowhere else around) and he said one last thing to me, but he must not have because I heard nothing and his lips didn't move, it just felt like he said something. And then his eyes closed and his blue faded out and I mourned him dead and as my head lowered I noticed the chess board. My queen my rook my bishop had checkmated him but the move had not been duplicated as my king stood alone on the far side of the squares. But I knew again as I seemed to know so many things in this that it had not been me who made the final moves to kill my partner but himself causing his own impregnation with the seed of death. This made me not feel much better at all. (Sometime later he will notice that as the old man died something fell out of him that was a drastic part of the life that he led) What I felt was temporary-mortality-(being there for an eye blink and not getting any chance at more of anything like knowledge or friendship or love)-ness (which is no kind of a word at all but will have to do for this explanation) "...real horrorshow and lovely..." I left. I did not run this time but walked. I had no energy. In a soft blue phosphorescent corridor walking slowly contemplating when a man runs to me from the opposite direction. He is a young man (un joven) of muscular build in tattered clothes of some nation's flag. He was multiracial but not in the conventional way. He was Spanish then African then Asian then Slavic and Irish and Arab and Indian and so on and so on and on and on and his clothes changed with him tattered as they were colors and shapes and fabrics and prints. And he opened his mouth to speak (but first changed from German to African) and shouted "Nkosi Sikelel' i Afrika!" And though its base was African it was spoken in every dialect of every place everywhere and was intriguing and warm and beautiful and washing-over feeling so I smiled, but understanding instead of content. And with a ~~smirk~~ tear in one eye he smiled back knowing I understood and as if it were done he came apart into a billion vivid colored snowflakes with a strong wind to scatter him but not touch me. And I noticed as he flew apart that his tear remained intact, and as it fell from cheek to floor it took the form of a tiny world with blue brown white green and all the colors of stable (unstable) life but as it hit the cold concrete it shattered like a hollow glass marble. So much death. Or was it death? I walked on on on into a room completely black (but rather dark deep opaque blue) and something told me to stop. A hissing of white noise from a machine I knew must be in front of me. I tried to look around the room but all I could see was nothing so I sat down in a chair that wasn't there until I was. A screen came on it was as big as a wall and frightened me being so imposing. I hated television always have but this thing seemed to have arms that drew me to it. The hissing and snow stopped and was replaced with words and or pictures of everything and everyone and they were all doing things and showing me things or telling me things and I felt that overloading feeling that I had before a long time ago after something happened to me but I can't remember what it was. But I knew that when it happened before I wanted something common and good but I couldn't remember what that was either but I knew that this time I didn't want anything and that's good because want leads to need. So I sat there trying to take it all in the history and present and future of not only these things dear to me but [everything]{.underline}. And when I woke up