One man admitted that T made him feel.
I remember cleaning out my desk, rearranging my things
Time has oxidized to a dull green. Those given a placebo have
Sometimes a ghost entered my heart and I could feel, and some-times phrases entered my mind and I could speak, with reason. But never was I able to stay a man long enough to remain him.
— Jeff Clark, “Napoleonette”
Whatever we do on the piano is a collection of illusions.
— András Schiff
So I take my hand,
and even though I know my hand,
I know I know it,
it feels like your hand.
I take it but I’m tired.
I know I’m tired because I squeeze
what I see between my eyelids.
Then I dream that your mind is mine.
I dream that I secure it
with my end of the rope.
I wake while saying
that what I say is the truth,
that you should believe me
because I say it.
Book One
If there’s one thing
I remember apart
from all other things,
that I remember it
is astounding to me
though maybe not
to Tim who I recounted
this to before I left,
I recounted that you
arrived home one day
fatigued as much as
I’ve seen anyone fatigued,
you could barely connect
to your life and in a way
you felt as though
it were repeating.
You were aware
that it repeated, but
you had no control,
all the little things
you did that day
were out of character,
you had been exposed
to T, the lab bustled
with dishes and you
wore the protective gear,
but you said perhaps
it wasn’t enough,
there could be no
other explanation
for your fatigue,
there had been no out-of-
the-ordinary activity
besides working
with the dishes of T,
which were introduced
that day by members
of a parent company.
When they presented you
and your colleagues
with Petri dishes,
you felt a little uneasy,
but mainly because it
was something new,
not because the dishes
caused some red flag
to pop up, you always
tell me of your uneasiness
when something new
enters your life and
you haven’t