ONE HUNDRED MONUMENTS

One encounters as many on a walk to the beach

she said, stepping into the room. To know was a something-to-do

but what after all could be done? Of course

even saying "a walk to the shore" might mean knowing

and somewhere long things must thrill to be thought of

but a-rising, a swelling, eventual ebbing-away

if a pleasure in the sense of an accurate arc which

disguises the parts that have made it, or them

they would go, yes to somewhere, to ah! where

the boy says, "Look, you're a girl. I'm a set of assumptions. We came all the way here to experience presence. We might as well treat our old arms to a drink. Correct?" She is looking away, studiously dressing people with her eyes. He takes a sideways step to stand in front of her so she'll have to look into his oceanic chest. He raises his eyebrows as if pretending to speak a foreign language, like this:

Are they today the regular sums of time this hour?

Then this the end in such a way to give the one recently

truth that was sunk it to underwater of the report, was. 

With that is excessively false. Next week together dish!

But what he spoke was nothing, or that. He was liquidus, which, like liquid, meant he was difficult to understand even when not speaking. 

"Wanna go find a house?" she splashes.

"A What?"

" It's a building in which people live; a residence for human beings."

"Oh. I understand."

"At the pier. I've done it before, and it worked.  Wanna go?"

"I enjoy parties." 

"Time is all the men I wish I knew in boats coming toward my house."

"Well, I live in a big house." 

"Well, I live in a big house, composed of several smaller houses."

"Forgive me."

"Many of my closest friends are homeless, bodiless, friendless, boundless."

"Look at the waiter, haven't we met?"

"Look at the water. All you see is water, but really it holds the most amazing geology, such as for example rivers, disposable cameras, oyster farms."

"Couldn't we stop for a drink on the way?"

The boy and the girl begin to walk in opposite directions in the parking lot. The boy notices and says, "Where are you going?  My car's over here."

"Oh, mine's over here."

"We're taking your car?"

"I am."

"Oh."

"Oh."

The boy looks in the direction of his car

he's wondering whether it'll be okay to leave it in the lot or not.  He raises his eyebrows again and looks into the sun

he's made of beautiful glass. He says he thought it was nighttime

it were a condition. When he looks back at the girl she is already opening the door of an old Mercedes always.

And krill nearby think of what might be their

legs.  Drawing closer to land, they wish the weather away but cannot agree on a way to meet the waves.  We used to eat

everything, like flies whose legs don't stick so violently to cellophane.  Talking

is difficult underwater, says the decision, but we know we're always as close to the moon as a calendar to its maker.  

It is now sixuation o' clock. They've been driving south of minutes.  Will they meet their image in the tide?  In their separate cars they are strangers, crustaceans, unbelievably bounded.  She remembers something John C. Calhoun said to her mother over breakfast when the four of us were dating.  "To know one's boundaries, that, my friends, is wisdom in longing."  Consider the oyster.  I don't think any of them would be listening to music.  The sound of the Pacific on their right floods in through windows.  This is proof they are really going south, unless they are mistaking the ocean's name, or in China.  "China."  It rolls off one's tongue like honeyed kisses, but begins barbarically with a sound like a clock.  Made of beautiful glass, my shoe.  Please don't touch me, the narrator.  I would die to touch your actual presence.  You buy oysters in China for seven pence and ask when did the price go up.  She is smoking her third cigarette since she got in the car and she hasn't looked at the boy's car once.  She thinks her cigarette tastes salty, or the sea is a smoke ring, a room of senses.  He's been glancing at her, speeding up so their windows are parallel, then falling back like an American sprinter throwing a race to his Chinese competitor in the 1924 Olympic games in St. Louis, Hunan Province.  When he thinks she is looking his way he is happy, warm, as he imagines an oyster must be.

[Exeunt.]

Nobody ever arrives at a beach, as we know, even those who have lived in beach houses.  The idea of the beach is a constant bow, the always-receding, so we have adapted mechanisms such as clam-diggers, boyfriends, long weekends, bay windows.  The moon, too, appears to have known very little about many things which may now strike the reader as commonplace.^[1]   We, however infrequently, buy ourselves breakfast, not knowing the nature of things.

ONE HUNDRED THINGS

At one point

in the meeting

there'd been talk

of this and

that hello but the

numbers were all

wrong and no

one wanted anything

to do with

it anymore. A 

woman kept leaving

the room with

a sigh, hello to you too! everyone

looked at her

because she glided

atop the floor

in diagonal wisps,

as if in

ecstasy. The dress

had this cape

like thing attached

at the back

collar. Normally, it

fell parallel to

her body. When

she moved it

moved. It was

not the ocean

but it could

have been. It

was only motion

but it sounded 

like a violin.

I was once more, but I'm now like a rounded v, like u but not quite, and in the valley, my gut a rounded valley, its sides high like a velodrome, everything sinking down the gutter valley, men in ties aound the big table and one wondering if she was ever a girl and, if so, if she appeared the same then, if the hem of her dress had been sewn inward, unfurling an inch or two at each birthday celebration, until she reached her amazonian height.

ONE HUNDRED

This was when the boy and girl realized, in the very same moment, and both, knowing that the other one was realizing it, that hearing is a feeling, and that feeling, while related to touch, is intangible. They held hands but didn't love each other. They thought about the concept of the beach and that was enough for one day. They spoke like dogs during naps.

"Are we still in time together?"

"Three men I wish I knew in boats are coming to my house. One is mute, and fingerless."

"And the other two?"

"What do you mean."

"And the other two?" She looked at him as if he were a piece of window.

"The mute one carries them."

"That explains -- "

"Please, don't say it."

So he didn't.

"I guess that's not that long, I think, are you sure?"

"Yes, it's not long at all for a beach."

"Did you feel that?"

"A whistle?"

"A missile."

"Close. Should we pitch forward?"

They leaned into the sunset until the sunset was a place which no longer existed and was mostly understood in that way in which places that came and went inexplicably made up all things. They thought about change. It made them want to vomit, so they vomit. They do what they want. The ocean can always wash away vomit. The ocean always washes away vomit. The ocean washes vomit. The ocean always. The oceanwash vomits always. The ocean always vomits vomit. Things have taken a turn and they know it. When all else fails, look to the gut to vomit. When all else fails turn to concrete, to vomit.

"Let's talk about math.  I know it is always on everyone's mind.  I could give each of you a dollar, or you could each give me a dollar.  The question is, which would be more effective?"

Each man looked in his each of his pockets, then at each other man, then in each other man's pockets. If each man looked in each of his pockets, then at each other man, then in each other man's pockets, assuming each man has nine pockets (two back pockets, two front pockets, the third little pant pocket nestling in one other front pant pockets, two jacket pockets, one breast pocket, and a shirt pocket), how many times have you forgotten something important? 

Each then looked at the gargantuan woman wondering whether she had any pockets at all or if she thought each odd thing that ever happened was the work of a performance artist.  At that moment she began her aria:

Five billion, one hundred five million, eight hundred fifty-seven thousand, five hundred thirty.

"Perform that," she said. But these were just numbers, so everyone ran around like an original. One bumped into one for no good threeson and the bumped was eight times madder than any one had ever been befour. Perhaps, if one had no one how two be four tender he would never had gotten into this sixuation two begin with. I made you an oyster, love.  Perhaps, one thought, I should be a bit more benine with my wild ways. Seven.

3.

The girl tried to break the formula by hurling an American at it, but she missed and hit the boy with tuberculosis in the chest. The boy's heart shattered like beautiful glass.

ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR CALLER ONE HUNDRED!

The house on tracks                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        But, of course, of course

                slides down to                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       the day

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  was one long the shore    

        and is backless                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   a crack in the glass                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                        in the estuary 

by nightfall

Life looked bleak for the two. But they journeyed onward, homeward bound. They imagined living their lives, and then they did, but they didn't know the difference yet. Obviously.

"Do you think mothers are sad at this time?" she asked him, looking straight at the horizon.

"You are the only mother I think about."

"Mother."

Goodbye!

They climbed up an especially tall dune, three times the size of any other, and growing  beneath their footsteps. Whatever was beyond it was well hidden by the immensity of the dune and the encompassing darkness. They were hoping to find a beach house, a mother, one hundred pieces of glass all of varying beauty. On the other side it waited for them. Or they waited for it. Or no one waited and it finally actually happened. Just like that, without any motives, without time for words.

Now he is a prominent plastic surgeon in an elevator.  He whistles a song that begins with numbers and ends with the phrase times have changed and time has changed. The doors open. "For twenty-seven years," he says, "I've been giving each one of my clients your face."  She smiles, and in an instant, her face has morphed into an accurate copy of his.  Her eyes expel terrible fluids and gases.  Her memory takes her to an orchard like her face, she sees him in several trees and hurls pulpy fruits at his name.  His laughter is greater than the distance between them and the distance between the first and thirtieth floor.  Fruitflies have juggled our love before, the old "game, set, match!" of stolen earth.  They shout to eachother in foreign voices from opposite sides of the operating table, knowing what they play at better than why.

Memories were there, they could be recounted and rectified but the boy and the girl, now man and woman, weren't sure if they had actually lived out the moments that they remembered. Instead, they thought about Chinese surgeons and Blade Runner, blushed with foolishness, and continued on before things got awkward. They had the same face, the same memories, but they still weren't in love. They continued on towards the ocean as the ocean continued on away from them and back again. The air is thick and salted and the ocean is thick air.