New morning. New day. Are you awake? Clarify the moment. Breathe in. Exhale. Molecules of air. There is no breeze indoors. Only human thoughts. Swirling. Spiraling. Chaos & Disorder.

Anger.

What is it?

Inventions of the mind. Distortions of reality. Turbulence. Entropy. Machine-made mind. Progress. Progress of a novel. Progress towards Nirvana. I am a bodhisattva. I am aroused by the thought of Enlightenment. I pursue the ox. I embark on the Way.

Sukha.

Leave the home behind.

Brisk walker. Keep walking. What do you see? Is it time to shave the head? Yes. It is always time. Are you afraid? Do not be afraid. Ten thousand Buddhas walk with you. 

Infinity of Buddhas.

Sit under the bodhi tree. Are you a dharma seeker? Here in Astoria, Queens is such a thing possible? Of course it is. Of course. How could it be otherwise? You have lain with many lovers. Forget their names. Can you forget? A test for you. I renounce my name. I am nameless. A bowl for rice. A flannel robe. Gnarled stick. I walk. I am the grunge Buddha. Pearl Jam. Nirvana.

Forget these sounds. Listen to Zappa. Captain Beefheart. Forget them, too. Karlheinz Stockhausen. Helmut Lachenmann. Forget! Surrender to the vast emptiness, nothing holy. The number 2222 is a special number. Ask no questions. Words. Numbers are beyond words.

Philip K. Dick has his Exegesis. This is mine. I am exploding. I am a Supernova. I am a Quasar. The brightest luminosity in the Universe. The brightest phenomena in the Cosmos.

I am a dragonfly.

Ephemeral as aether.

K. unsnapped Zig’s fly. She gave him the blowjob of the century. Zig lay there in disbelief & awe. I must forget the person I was. Cannot linger. Sukha. Leave the home. I get a haircut. A buzzcut. I feel aerodynamic. I might hit a first serve at 263 kilometers per hour. I hear water gushing through pipes. I hear cars humming over a motorbridge. A plane prepares to land at LaGuardia airport. Everybody is going somewhere. I am sitting. Mind is electronic fire.

If you scroll through this novel, it reads faster. Tips of our thumbs are fingertips. Easy on the eyeballs. Not too fast! Might start the storytelling pretty soon. Prepare yourself. Are you ready? Something is clearly happening here. Nobody knows what it is. The dog is being wagged.

Control knobs. Oscillations. What does it mean to be a human being? Carbon. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Oxygen. Phosphorus. Sulfur. CHNOPS. A mnemonic device. A memory machine. In search of a rocky planet. Giant blue hypervelocity stars are defecting from the galaxy. Mind & body drops away. Well yes I am thinking… not thinking.

Protoplanetary discs are forming around young stars. Stardust accretes. Planets are born. I am thinking about this on Earth. The only planet with self-conscious life. As far as we know. What are the odds? What is the probability? What do you think of Fermi’s paradox? Hogwash, right? I mean, it is an intelligent observation. I just prefer to believe otherwise. Call it an instinct.

What if your brain is the greatest Space Telescope ever created?

Can you see?

Can you feel the stars?

Drifting. Drifting through the Cosmos. I am made of stardust. I am made of atoms. What keeps us together? Gravity? A few loose thoughts? This novel?

Earth pulls me back in. Stay here. Fix the leaking pipes under the sink. Read the newspapers about Baghdad Airport in Iraq. The extrajudicial killing of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. The MQ-9 Reaper drone. Flying machines of death built by General Atomics. We could explore the stars. We could save the planet. 

Even Tucker Carlson is aghast.

What next.

How now.

Another Grateful Dead show?

Ignite a blunt. Eat a cupcake. Sip a coffee. Are you a veteran of the Atari Wars? Joystick in hand. Thumbing a red button.

Amerika is everywhere. Spreading its likeness. Absorbing. Repurposing. Propaganda factories manufacturing a reality. We are hungry ghosts. Eating. Consuming. Desiring. Wanting. Hurts to be a person. Particles colliding. Scattering. Into deep space. Into a void.

The gravity of a novel loosens its grip. We seek pleasure elsewhere. Netflix. A fuck. Roll & get rolled. Gasp. Spit. Palms under a buttock. 

You read Deleuze & Guatarri. 

A Thousand Plateaus.

Anti-Oedipus.

Now, I am alert. Everything is an assemblage. You. Me. The cosmic machine. We are pinball wizards. Spiraling in a tilt-a-whirl. The flappers are flapping. The Roaring 2020s. 

On the edge of what?

It will be clear later.

When things settle. What things? I have no idea. I am the novelist. I know. I know. Uncertainty is my game. Who is on my team? I do not care about the Giants. The Jets. I sort of like the Pittsburgh Steelers. Because of a woman. I know. Not the greatest reason. Or is it? 

Love.

Love is a battlefield.

The winner takes it all.

I am a loser, baby.

So.

The protoplanetary gas disc of this novel is starting to impress me. We are getting bigger. Absorbing the planetesimals. Creating a planet embryo. Giving birth to something new.

We expect.

We are expecting.

Unpredictable.

She is wearing her Steelers jersey. She is on her knees and hands. Looking at me over her right shoulder. Hut-one. Hut-two. Hike! We are making love. We are going at it. Looping and oscillating. Glimpse.

Really. Machine_a novel in progress. Who came up with that title? I did. Pilot of a Volkswagen Beetle. Zigzagging from one exploding star to the next. Planet formation is fascinating. The variability in solar systems is incredible. Hot Jupiters practically kissing the sun. Super Earths in improbable locations. Just like people. Just like you. Just like me. Here we are!

I lope through the day. Dragging my left foot behind me. My cock used to swell to ridiculous proportions. Now it looks like a shriveled worm. I need pills to get a hard-on. 

So it goes, says Mr. Vonnegut.

Are we on the edge of World War III?

Sure feels like it.

Every day.

Every nanosecond.

Does Amerika need a President? Does the planet need an Amerikan President? Feels too dangerous. The Cosmos is a dangerous place. Nightmares are electronic. What is real? What is reality? More or less is left behind. We build our lives out of cosmic dust. We orbit the Sun.

The wobble of a Sun can be observed from great distances. If there is a looker… a Seer. Someone must look. Someone must give a damn. Possess a curiosity. 

Peepholes into Space.

The city is a giant horseshoe crab next to the sea. Its metal retractable shell protects inhabitants from typhoons and sea surges. I operate the machine. I decide when to deploy the shell. It is a great responsibility. I cannot be wrong. Not with 88,888 human lives at stake. Yes. We are a small city. All has become so after the Event.

This could be its own novel.

A novel within a novel.

If I had the temerity. Do I? Hard to say at the moment. Joaquin Phoenix just won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Joker. Is this a performance? Of course it is. Am I tickled from eating oysters? Possibly.

My hand lotion feels & smells like Elmer’s glue.

I love you.

Why are you so distant?

So far away?

Orgasm as prolonged as possible. We lay on our sides. Breathing. Your thigh slung over my hip.

Memory gets in the way of progress. She salts it and gives me a suck. I am nineteen. Blowing sperm into her mouth. I feel her palm spread on my right buttock. I am standing. My jeans bunched up at my ankles. Pretty soon it is her turn. Skirt hiked up. Panty crotch pushed aside. She makes the low guttural groans of orgasm.

A plotted narrative is required.

Let’s move on.

I am here, in the night, under a sky. Everything is out there. Comets and asteroids. Intercontinental ballistic missiles. We are a mistake away from Armageddon. Perhaps closer than that. Everybody just says things. Punching nonsense into pocket machines. Posting as impostors. Pretenders. No human beings left. Ask Norbert Weiner. He wrote a book called The Human Use of Human Beings. Thomas Pynchon alerted me to this little masterpiece. Required reading for all automatons. Robot is a Czech word.

My back hurts. Bulging discs & herniated discs in my thoracic spine. I hope I can fuck again. Everything feels like the Beatles song “Yesterday.” I am here. Right now. Meditating my ass off. My hair is on fire. My nostrils inhale the Cosmos.

Easy tiger. A novel is a marathon. Long-distance love affair. You cannot have an American girlfriend and a European girlfriend. Yes you can. You just have to make sure you do not write about it in a notebook journal. Girlfriends read everything. Especially when you are at the tavern. 

Lightning strikes twice.

Sometimes thrice.

I am an idiot machine. A perfect storm. 

I make noise. A novel is a silent scream. Bursts of laughter. Awkward silences. I see through space and time. Pools of hydrogen gas. Gravity begins its work.

Where is everybody?

Hahaha. 

Fermi. You funny man.