Field Effect

For 8 months he lay in bed over the difference between “the bell rings” & “he rings the bell.” Did those 2 “rings” SOUND DIFFERENT? The invisible disturbance which is the bell’s vibration beating at the air—a FIELD EFFECT—does it shift with the ringer’s will? This, he thought, was the smallest difference between things which the human mind could hold (or almost hold, the thought-of-it falling away from the thinking, a penny rolling to the horizon & so to sleep . . .). He couldn’t get up. It became clear that he was the murderer. Everyone knows. A man standing at a podium reads from notes. In the audience people nod in immaculate suits, women & men.When I am done someone will transcribe what I say into speech. It will not resemble my notes. He is just THE THING between his notes & his speech. This is only fair, that he be the air. Some of the women wear hats with feathers in them, wild, candescent. In the audience is a boy named B, not the letter, not the note. Another sound, neither letter nor note—