Tinkling cascades of keys, successions of musical descent, smudged bass lines widening through the inky blackness of the backdrop, going to pieces around the words, softly laid on the latticework of notes and touches of extraneous sound. Delicate. Some adjective beginning with a prolonged “s.” Pure. Tiny, but not in size, in conception. Comingbackcomingbackcomingblack. Now. NOW. Nownow. Now. now. nOw. NOw. NOWnowNOW. Fingers dig into the flow of the present past me, somehow understanding will accomplish a reversal, will stop things. It’s all recorded. It stands there in the past. As soon as I press the key, say the word, think the thought, it becomes past. So past, so past, so past, over and over and over and over and over and it’s part of me now. Layers upon caked layers upon, my personality is painted on, flaking at the edges, cracking in the sun of circumstances. So thick, so glassily opaque, so immovable, crusts of habits and thoughts that are in the past now. And the chance is coming up; I can feel it approach, blackened mind groping about in the distance, stumbling foward, stumbing over into then and now and past and here and leaping over distance and far away and who what where when inquiries for which no answer arrives. Think, just think just think just think just think about it. Realize it. Apply the mind like a mask to the newspaper and pull it away, after having pressured the impression of now and past. We don’t know what we’re swimming in, and I could have this epiphany, this moment out of time where I could see the structure of the world like a blanket, pulling the stems of understanding out of the now and further up and further in, where the inside is bigger than the outside, the future is more past than the present, my life regresses under my eyes and there’s a turnabout of paradoxes, spinning infinity down to nothing and back to the universe again. I know these things. Something knows, something under the weight sludge of dragging my face forward and the closed eyes understanding we all share. Some know, but on blackboards and in textbooks, but no one KNOWS because you need to see it, you need to be pulled up out of our plane, to understand the sphere you need to look past the circles. Touches of it are here, and I want to know, but it’s a Cassandra desire, since even if I did know no one would have a means of knowing too… The knowing wouldn’t avail me.