__________do you know what a semicolon is? the ringing continues. I can’t move, I am unforeseen in an ice pit for meat goods. the ringing and meat goods feel solid. particles and other things resemble something else, that something else knocks at my head. the ringing is in my body, in the air, and on the ground in the form of an over charged memory. memory in block letters. a sign reads, “not this way - buster.” I do not know who buster is or was or what the way is or was, but the sign keeps passing through my head towed by an ancient biplane. the ringing continues back, some song vanishes into darkness. there is a location of pain without a map. the ringing moves forward to sin, durga’s army tramples across my skull, wailing in great slashed strides. the sky is blood red. I dial "this is my number," and it’s busy. something particularly nasty splits into two, one side continuously plays slap-happy-sing-along-looney-tunes - “what’supdocwhat’supdocwhat’supdocwhat’supdocwhat’supdocwhat’supdoc . . .,” only faster. while the other side plays the same thing only the theme melts in my mind, melting my body, the tube looses vertical hold, the floor is parallel, the walls are perpendicular, and at odd angles. this is the floor in my bathroom and this is where the ringing lies. somewhere doesn't exist, but I must get somewhere, to work, to a job I no longer have. I must get someplace where the horizontals make sense, where the mind signals left, where there is a knee cap response, where the body is a multidirectional entity able to move beyond a bathroom floor. being one with the bathroom floor entails a certain commitment to space, an occupation of space, a consumption of space, a being one with space. this requires a time element, am I ready to purchase the deed to this fetal position at constant rest? am I ready to to sign the mortgage for my own personal time allotment and abandoned evolution? am I willing to take the fine print to its point of extinction? for the first time I notice the bathroom is vertically lit with high noon heat, how the tub suffered from the loss of one of its legs, how a collection of things from elsewhere were hidden under old moments of flesh. can I move beyond the typical substantial and make requests of limbs to follow. should I start with something small like a toe, a finger, a lip movement that resembles an emotional response to stimuli, or, just jump up to attention, salute the proprietor of self gratification and return to the arbitrary story line? on the other hand this could be an act of renunciation, a path to enlightenment, the buddha sitting under a local tree in dead people’s clothes, christ going to the desert and not knowing what restroom. this could be the counter point to the self, a self cleaning oven. I might spend days contemplating chaucer, einstein, and jackie bonner benny amuse-us-till-the-cows-come-home, the possibilities seem endless. if I lay in a state of rest I might be able to feel quarks move and neutrinos dance through the very tips of my loose knit cellular structure, signaling morse code, dictating a long winded declaration never heard before. on the other hand, maybe someone will call an agency for the alone and abandoned, they could come and visit, make an assessment and since my door is unlocked they could enter wearing their neat little governmental outfits, all crisp and polyprewashed never needs cleaning, carrying notepads to keep notes on, and asking repetitive questions. -how may I help you? there's been a report of noninvolvement with normal functioning required by law of all citizens, living or dead . . . how do you plead? how may I help you? how do you plead? -I thought you would at least ask why I am here . . .. -it’s not my job, all I do is enforce the laws, I neither care whether it’s choice or will. I’m merely a technician of the law and my job is to write reports that get filed . . . -but . . . ? -but nothing, or everything or it doesn't matter. I’ve been doing this job through six and-a-half presidents, one thousand and forty three international incidents and I don't know how many changes in the code of noninvolvement. it’s my duty, or could I say, I take it upon myself to say you have no rights, since you do not meet the requirements of state sponsored nonfunctioning. there is the supervised nonfunctioning, the partially functioning, the decapitated functioning and nearly on the edge of something functioning, but you see . . . you don't fit into any of the categories. we have no category for laying on the bathroom floor, pretending to be future floor covering or a silence that could never be understood. we have no categories, no measurable distinction. I have no choice but to say there is nothing I can do but walk out that door and then through the other door. on the other hand it’s within your rights to file an appeal, start a new twelve step something or other, which is stated in the code book dated on this date as your optional option, but then again this does not indicate or prove anything. a form will be filed somewhere post crematorium. so my suggestion is to make a duplicate filing within known categories. I can leave a list that describes the criteria and services offered. there didn't seem to be much more to be said. before I could glance up, the front door shut, I kept smiling till I heard the second door shut, which I didn't ask to be shut, which seemed to indicate an assumption that when one leaves a room one shuts a door, but leaving the door open would have at least let the outside in, which would have left me an arbitrary option. it came to me in this optionless option, as strange russian troops marched through the bathroom on their way to yet another uprising, to yet another stronghold. I couldn’t miss it, the same way hypocrisy is measurable, like Marilyn Monroe's some like it hot credo - "you can always teach a new dog to turn on a dime in five inch heels," there was trouble ahead and it’s spelled with “t” and rhymes with pool. I heard something, I think it was the four horsemen from the apocalypse who had arrived on main street proclaiming a legal holiday, a time to get your affairs in order. just then a scream from a former set of panics - "the concorde’s down." for a minute I wasn’t sure what had fallen, then it hit me - "the plane . . . the plane . . .." the wright brother’s dream, fast forward or way back to when someone said, if susan had intended us to fly we would have wings and then just like that, the wright brothers flew, only a little faster than one would have with wings. but what was all the excitement about? planes crash all the time. silence on the set. action. crash. things fall into bigger things - what makes it such a tragedy? tragedy is seeing the rats from the sewer sit on your neighbor’s front porch smoking cigarettes. tragedy is not hearing the shriek air makes when it is struck with cold stainless steel. tragedy is hearing the birth scream, and wanting to go back and try door number two before the distant near mother is separated out as an object. -there, there. constantly saying. -there, there. the distant mother would stand there or call and ask about the weather, always talking about the weather and real-estate prices, “what did you say the price of your home was? and how's the weather out there?” while someone is crucified to a fence, another suffocates as paramedics chant holy holiday ghosts rituals, propagating correct genitalia placement, at the same time a graceful castrati sings heavenly songs for the pontiff royal. there must be some way to crack the distant mother syndrome consistent inquiries about plastic seat covers, and do you want to be a millionaire? do you know the answer? do you feel like a million dollars? do you feel that parenthesis around time and is it going to rain? do you feel my side aching from laying here on the bathroom floor all night saying- -do know what this means? -what do two notes sound like? -do you know what a semicolon is?