1.0
she sat amid a murder of crows and sat. she pondered the myriad black. she sat. like an oil spot in the rain drifting with
gritty smell
asphalt
minerals
lime slices
she sat
1.1
he lived in a house. it was just an ordinary house. not extravagant. inside the house resided new letters and new colors but to him. to the man. it was just a place to
eat his meals
lay his head
and thump his fingers on the windowpanes
2.0
she bites at her nails. left hand. ring finger. always a nuisance. she ponders. how is she going to get a new job. she needs a new cardigan after all. one just like the one she has. the one she’s wearing. grey. but without the holes in the armpits. her mother keeps telling her to quit safety pinning her life back together.
she sits. she watches a crow tug at a crust of bread. how do the holes get in her armpits? do moths invade her room and nibble at the threads of her sweater while she sleeps? and how do moths get into her dresser? and find the armpits of her neatly folded sweater? or do they get at it while she’s wearing it? when she’s not paying attention? watching the neighborhood children cross the street? at the end of a good book? and why the armpits? do they taste or smell better to moths? oh her wandering mind.
like taking candy from a baby
In 1926, a German scientist Werner Heisenberg, formulated his famous uncertainty principle. In order to predict the future position and velocity of a particle, one has to be able to measure its present position and velocity accurately. The obvious way to do this is to shine light on the particle.
she stares at the crows. one thick-bodied bird is dragging a large twig with its mouth and trying to fly. crows are big birds. and this one is a healthy specimen but the twig is too big. longer than the bird’s body. every time the bird tries to fly its wings just won’t catch flight. oh determined bird. i bet that bird could get any cardigan it wanted. she thinks.
she hums. she enjoys watching it struggle. tugging at the end of the nail between clenched teeth.
maybe i’ll marry a postman. a postman with a pension. a postman with a pension. a postman with a pension. wouldn’t that just be easier? before the gangrene gets us all. no. she meant. before she has to settle for. for. the crow hauled the tree branch away. no doubt to make a superior nest! the murder is one less for the leaving. a beta bird finds more bread…
like taking candy from a baby
Some of the waves of light will be scattered by the particle and this will indicate its position. However, one will not be able to determine the position of the particle more accurately than the distance between the wave crests of light, so one needs a short wavelength in order to measure the position of the particle precisely.
she read. uh. she read somewhere that bread is bad for crows. it expands in their fragile little intestines, causes their wings to be disfigured, sticking out at awkward angles. these deformed wings prevent them flying. she is worried about the crows. she is worried about this world in which a simple childhood can have disastrous results. oh crows. oh innocence.
2.1
while he’s shaving today, chin lifted into the medicine cabinet (always observed), the house threw out new numbers – numbers for the numbers between the numbers – he’s an ordinary man, he puts on aftershave – the new numbers, unnoticed fade back into oblivion no dedicated algorithm may ever uncover, and so goes the house.
3.0
she’s plain
but a postman would be happy
they could take walks together and share muffins on Saturday mornings
they could plan trips to exotic places like Aruba and Belize
they could go when he retires
in the meantime they can water-ski in the summer
and the casino on the reservation on the other weekends
the other weekends
when there isn’t mail to be delivered of course
three crows fly away
a murder made smaller
she sits
3.1
he seemed to always have dishes in his sink
(the sink was just finishing its study of Wittgenstein’s famous closing remarks in Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus)
and always holding dishes
it seemed
some cycle was off somehow
somewhere
“whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent”
elbows in the dishwater
like shooting fish in barrel
Now, by Planck’s quantum hypothesis, one cannot use an arbitrarily small amount of light; one has to use at least one quantum. This quantum will disturb the particle and change its velocity in a way that cannot be predicted. Moreover, the more accurately one measure the position, the shorter the wavelength of the light that one needs and hence the higher the energy of a single quantum. So the velocity of the particle will be disturbed by a larger amount.
the talk radioman told of an African lion outside of town
he said they sent the dog teams out to the Outskirts
no scent detected
by wet and capable noses
but several witnesses
a fuzzy photo
and one paw print
a phantom lion
from Africa
he remembered the buzz of African killer bees years ago coming from Mexico
everything to worry about
he worries
comes from Africa or north from Mexico
but didn’t the lion just come from the zoo
the man on the radio didn’t say
the zoo was not missing a lion
a paw print
a phantom
the shutters on the window giggled
4.0
she packed some things
it wasn’t practical
a suitcase to go to the park
but she seemed to always have bags
plastic shopping bags
canvas shoulder bags
like hapless limbs
hanging from her grey arms
her life was just incongruous like that
perpetually transitional
one thing into another
one hour bearing no resemblance to the one that had just passed
in one day
she needed so many…
things
so a suitcase
finite and discrete
“this could work”
she said out loud to no one
4.1
he had a fair amount of books
here
there
he hadn’t read most of them
he preferred the evening news
and the things on the internet
or staring out the windows at the train tracks and the airplanes
oh modern man
the walls of his house would borrow the words from the books
while the book jacket shells sat inertly on the shelves
the house would compose manuscripts and fancy word problems for algebraic results
searching the texts for all the x’s that could be found
5.0
the crows hung together
and yet they were rogue
black bird oil spots slipping away from the rain
a crow had to watch her back
even in the sweet languid summer months
someone
her family
her lover
were always cawing something about survival
you take care of you
with eyes like floating coals
she drifted
of the lists she ignored
5.1
Heidegger and Nietzsche
suited the appetite of the house
the man
all whiskers and boxer shorts
followed basketball games and even admitted to enjoying a poem or two
but philosophy never suited him
he survived
what use was there in thinking about why?