Curt Jimenez Attends a Talk. Thinks.

It takes a lot of energy to imagine how things appear after looking at them from all angles and then not having the pleasure of watching them, not even watching, but running your eyes across them, anymore. Or just observing these things, with multiple surfaces, from one angle. That is difficult.

I think I understand.

This idea of imagining the entire dimensions of something from nothing or from one angle is not my own, but that of a woman who was talking about her films on radiation and plum. I've never seen her films. I don't remember her name. But I remember she was insistent that plums could not be more than one, not under any circumstances. Therefore, several plums were several plum. That, too, I think I understand.

I went to her talk because I felt especially worldly today, and because of the tornado watch. What would I do if I saw a tornado? I wouldn't watch it.

After the talk, I tried to imagine a tornado from one angle. It came to me like this: how I used to draw flags on top of castles, which I also used to draw. The tornado was a flat triangle. Then, I removed the lines from the triangle because tornadoes don't have solid walls, and imagined lines like eyebrows. My tornado did not move. It did not make a noise. It was difficult to understand.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

Evian said, "I don't know how to stop," before I knew she was Evian. She was sitting in the library, so she whispered these things, but I heard her still. "I'm moving all the time, I have motion-less sickness. I'm dry," she said. "Like dehydrated." She knew I was listening because why else would she say these things in whispers meant for someone to hear?
"I'm Evian," she said.
"Curtis," I said, because I am tired of meeting people and writing that I've met so-and-so on this blog, and then never really seeing them again and then never writing their names down again on this blog and because what was the point of telling Evian that I was Curt, instead of Curtis? How could it offend her? How could I hurt her feelings? How did I know that her name was Evian, and not Ivana, or Else?
"Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know," she said.

What is boredom but nonsense? I could have walked away, I could have asked her what she meant, I could have told her that I had been moving, also, that I had lost a great many things and gained in tiny increments, vague, frustrating, and delicious interpretations of myself.
I should have ignored Evian. But she didn't give me a chance. She stood up and walked away.

The barcode on my library card was blurred. The man at the check-out counter told me so. He typed in my numbers and said I had a twenty-five cent fine. I dug in my pockets for a coin and came up with nothing.