by Kevin Johnson Murillo<\/p>\n
The Beggar The Giver<\/strong><\/p>\n \n \u201cThe fact of the matter is I have nothing to offer you, my pockets are empty, my shirt coat is empty, my stomach is empty. If I had anything to offer you, I\u2019d give it away freely without a moment\u2019s hesitation. I\u2019ve never been one to cling to things. Everything I have is in my head. I rummage about in there and grant you droppings, this I can do, freely, but something tells me you won\u2019t want them. It makes this whole gesture sterile, then, to give and for others not to receive, but that\u2019s beside the point, it\u2019s never discouraged <\/em>me to take note of the fact that all I am is worth less than shit to busy passersby, as long as I have the opportunity to rummage and then display. These are my wares, laid out bare on this blanket. There\u2019re all free for the taking, any<\/em>one can grab them and take them with them to faraway corners of the city or beyond, they are<\/em> to be taken. If left where they are on the blanket. No one bothers, and that\u2019s just as well because, as I\u2019ve made clear, as far as I can tell, it makes no difference, the point is they exist and here they are and if that\u2019s not enough for you, then fine.\u201d<\/p>\n The beggar paced back and forth beside the blanket. All there was on it was the odd coin from bewildered bystanders who pitied his destitution, nay, madness, a swarm of sound that bubbled forth continuously teetering on the most inconsequential nothing.<\/p>\n \n \n \n Someone I Never Knew<\/strong><\/p>\n \n There are, undoubtably, many different ways to get to know a person. You can, as I did, admire them from afar for ages and never say a word to them. You can work together for a common cause and receive them by osmosis. You can befriend, bewitch them\u2014but as I\u2019ve already pointed out, my case was the former, I never talked to them. I watched them in poetry class from behind and took note of their changing facial expressions depending on who they talked to. I watched them leave, taciturn, a bundle of textbooks under one arm. I watched them sitting listless from above, a gaze as empty as ice. I don\u2019t think they ever noticed me watching them; at least I didn\u2019t notice them notice me watching them. They were, for the most part, unremarkable, but still there was something about them that brought me back to check up on them. How were they doing? Were they drinking enough water? Were they content? There was nothing (explicitly) sexual about my fascination. A better word, then, would be curiosity. They were an anomaly, as all human beings are, but there was something about their chunky face, their stilted walk or desperate attempts at appeasement that kept bringing me back. Until one day they stopped coming to class. Then the scenario changed; I wasn\u2019t dealing with them anymore but with their absence. At first I told myself they\u2019d be back any day now, that nothing had changed. With acceptance I had to deal with their memory. When I felt their attraction I worked to reconstruct their living image in my head, the futile exercise I\u2019m partaking in now. Eventually you forget. Then all you have is the hole in your head that used to contain them. Eventually you forget that too and your body takes care to fill in that space.<\/p>\n \n \n \n Seer Seas Still<\/strong><\/p>\n \n So soon so see, all that\u2019s left is to write. I\u2019ve seen all there is to be seen. I\u2019ve been to the ocean. I saw the dolphins swimming in complex formations. I\u2019ve seen wrinkly faces, weathered, tattered. I\u2019ve seen hands that have seen too many days. I\u2019ve seen rambunctious children chase each other around and around in a circle. I\u2019ve seen water spiral on its way down a drain. I\u2019ve seen fingers curl up like talons. I\u2019ve seen empty hospital beds. I\u2019ve seen automated motor cars take people safely to their destination. I\u2019ve seen the pointlessness of arrival. I\u2019ve seen dew drip off leaves in the early morning, among other things. I\u2019ve witnessed all this and I fear there\u2019s nothing left to be seen. This isn\u2019t definitive. I know I could go outside tomorrow and come across some strange animal I never saw before, say a cross between a hyena and a bear, but that\u2019s too unlikely. Probably I am correct and there\u2019s nothing left to see. Which means I must be dead. If there\u2019s nothing left to see. But that\u2019s where writing comes in. There might in fact be nothing left to see, but there are still a great many things to be recorded, registered, filed away. I know that sounds awfully tedious, but the prospect of doing so now seems less tedious than living\u2014now that I\u2019m dead. What is this if not an extensive act of registering what was once seen with the aid of this, our great compliment of sight, language? I wonder, in my deadness, whether or not one might want to consider this act of registering with words a form of seeing as well (?), in which case it might be preferable to say that I am not dead but dying. Every word wrings out another possible sight from the (apparently) endless possible configurations of light and shadow. How does this compare to dolphins? I find it a lot more engaging to die this way, dispelling the magic of this yarn of clay that comes undone as we roll on and transfigure, disfigure, relocate with language. Maybe I\u2019ll never die! The prospect never sounded so sweet. Before I embarked on this act of writing down, I must admit I had already lost what little faith I had left in the business of living, though, I suppose, as deep as I am in this aktion, that what I had lost faith in could more accurately be described as the action of watching, so I extracted my eyes and replaced them with a tongue (metaphorically speaking, of course). And now I find that limits are illusory in this act of locution which actually has so very little to do with foresight, hindsight, or any other kind of seeing. In doing I\u2019m not watching, I\u2019m simply being, am<\/em> being, and insofar as I am I suppose I\u2019m awfully far away from death, aren\u2019t I? Which is not-being, the negation of that which I am when I\u2019m talking or writing down thoughts, whichever one it is. And I do find that I\u2019m farther, farther still than I ever was from the ocean. I must admit that it was a real special treat for me, that, to bear witness to foamy water, crests of waves, chipped seashells, the marks our feet left on wet sand (I was not alone then), the pearls. That was something(s) to behold. On the second day it wasn\u2019t so drastic. On the third day I was bored, though I never ceased to admire the \u201cmajesty\u201d of that (apparently) endless expanse of salty salty water. If only I could have swum to the other side, but I didn\u2019t know how to swim nor did I have any interest in learning. I show an interest in action now, in writing\u2014to the extent one can call this an action\u2014, but, at the time, the only action I cared about\u2014also dubious\u2014was seeing. I saw what had to be seen and then took leave of it. When there was nothing more to be seen, it was as if that panorama had died to me, as I am dead to the world now that I\u2019ve seen it all and all I can do is scream<\/em> and hope desperately for this to sustain me indefinitely. For how long will this be necessary? It all depends on my limb(it)s, when will they grow numb, when will they be unmoving, supposing this isn\u2019t a trick of my mind from the lack of stimulation in the death of darkness or the darkness of death: \u0244ncontrollable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Kevin Johnson Murillo The Beggar The Giver \u201cThe fact of the matter is I have nothing to offer you, my pockets are empty, my shirt coat is empty, my stomach is empty. If I had anything to offer you, I\u2019d give it away freely without a moment\u2019s hesitation. I\u2019ve never been one to cling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1644,77],"tags":[1645,1123,1652],"class_list":["post-14798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-76","category-english","tag-egophobia-76","tag-english","tag-kevin-johnson-murillo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3QG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14799,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions\/14799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}