Thoughts from a tormented soul

What's the sound a computer makes called?

It's like a high-pitched buzz when the bytes hit the metal. When the HDD spins
to that hair-thin track and jots out a line, a laser of charge and definition
on ... what's a CD made of? Polycarbonate. Pits and lands.

The lo-fi is just audible over the sound of the bytes. The hum of the piano
weaves through the sundown air speckled by hair and motes of dust. The sky
lazily condenses into a rainbow at the edges, still a crisp blue green towards
the up-down axis, clouds hovering like little bubbles on; what's it called when
you have two fluids that press each other? Like oil and water suspended in
glass -- immiscibility. Where that lower layer flows into the reservoir of
today and time yet steadily into fog.

The leaves wave below to the clarinet's sigh. Sticky notes on the corkboard
dance to the aircon. Hope looks at me as if propped on a cherry brown desk
gilded by incandescents. One arm's stuck on the 30-pin, head taking in the
greens and blues and black and ivory of the piano; I wonder if I did that on
purpose. She's where my badge should be. I think I like her better there.

It's like a little window from a spaceship floating to earth. The birds fly by
at the level of the eye; the rest of the world drifts by purpose and direction
and intention reduced to the first-order motion of an ant-sized car. A plane
echoes in the distance, a bird glides by and construction on the student center
is unfinished, like progress paused into frame, cranes mid-motion in still life
juxtaposed, between "go" and "go later".

I remember when a fire burned out the window last night. When a warehouse full
of mattresses colored the sky gray with tar and feathers like watercolor on
vinyl. From here it felt like art.  The accusatory is the innocent, the naive
quotes of anger and vitriol made silent by the rain. Carried away like this
building like an elevator from detachment to that thing they call nirvana or
glorious indifference, like a plane descending but never quite home, like an
acid trip or the end of a life when it's you and your thoughts but the thoughts
don't have noise. Just quiet. A pause in direction. An end, the color of memory
in beams on the walls.

There's something wrenching about the shape of my hands. Veins visible where
they stayed hidden before. Skin that's smooth, sweat glands crossing the
surface; it will not be forever this young. I won't be forever this young. The
motion and the drifting and the wave of time proceeds unforgivingly without
heart; with an unassuming and all-defeating and all-too-blissful order.