Anna Moschovakis

We wonder at our shifting capacities, keep adding and striking skills from the bottoms of our r é sum é s under constant revision like the inscriptions on tombs shared for generations unnervingly up to date Made nervous by our shift in capabilities, we write: I visited a country where kittens lay  dying under every bench, in every gutter, next to every  cigarette butt. One  made  me  weep. Two   made   me  worry.  Three   made   me look  away.  I  visited  a  city  with  very  few strays.  The   first   one   I   saw   I   adopted. What  could  it  mean? —posted by Sarah. 6.18.06 Hit “publish” and look away The New Violence: I visited a country where everything looked like home

That was the day your mesmerized went awol on the shore. Each star, you said, was the same star. Beneath our sunny beach blanket an anonymous moisture spread like fur. It’s getting dark and darker. Dusk is hard. Gossip travels worst when it’s low-contrast out; it stalls, and the air begins to crack. Droplets black as blood squeeze through fissures, making night. What came from above—the forestscan, the cornucump, the mar—came violently on our feet. Finally, when it was time to order, you pulled yourself up from the syntax we’d shared and beckoned for me to come. It’s just like rain, I said, as if to make amends. Every arm is the same arm, you replied, and took mine. * In which an unwitting traveler to a parallel universe, offered trum and toke all night, drinks himself out of his depth to drown the unknown source of his discomfort.

Some things lock in competition, like an earthquake and a kiss. While a decision is waiting to be made, neither side of the argument progresses. The earthquake, though eager to prove its claim, shows valiant restraint; the kiss? It knows the power of bitten tongues. Such stand-offs as these precede most gains (stance of knowing too much and fearing too late). The tongues, shaking along with the house, say nothing shattering at all. With progress, not only earthquakes but kisses will be predicted. The last fine line between feeling and fact will choose a good point, and end. Flattery will continue to make us immortal in the difficult years between the first word and the lost. * In which Mary, herself a palette of grays, inhabitant of a universe void of color, gains access to the complete scientific story of what makes red red—and reads it.

The challenge: to start not with theory but with tangible performance You and others, approaching We shall be asked for a way out to be fed to keep warm and dry Starting with experience, magic genuine science More than once we have been lost in a trackless wilderness dwarfed and shadowed by mighty buildings subway trains wild as elephants One goes blindly back to one’s desk These moments come, their dark shadow We glimpsed control and more tragic waste We entered with 40,000,000 warriors with the dignity of cathedrals The lake is upon you. You have two canoes, your tent The child has entered upon this desert You have your axes What, precisely, is your procedure?