Q&a

Where are you when you think? Not here. Which is strange, for someone who's 'all there'. Yesterday, I had to stop the car at the side of the road, put on the emergency lights, and repeat to myself: where the fuck are you? How can an oriental be disoriented?

Where are you when you think of another?

When you're a student you always hear teachers trying to be sexy by saying something like: 'it's not about what you know, it's about the questions you ask'. Knowing isn't everything. Or something equally odd: 'question everything'.

7:00 a.m.

No-one about except the cleaners. The earth still slowly coming to terms with the morning light. Shall I be open today, or not; who will find love on this bench, under this tree today, and who will lose it? Black coffee, a croissant. Lecture: woefully under-prepared. Hoping to wing it. Nabs, dear Nabs' books just come in, sitting on my desk, next to the pile of articles on utilitarianism.: Ken Irby's collected poems; Anne Carson's 'Fragments of Sappho. Danke, danke.

Outside on the steps, someone has made and left two white paper boats, the size of my thumb. Really quite delightful.Both capsized.Sunk, the night before.

The questions, you found, were only there to pass the time, to hear your voice, to read your words. How superficial is that?!

to fall in love with,
as surely

as the loved one
in the photograph before me.

---Ken Irby.

What intelligence you have is quite silly, really. The light in your eyes; I'm light-headed when I think about it.The distances between people. One might as well be Algerian or Chinese.

My house: there aren't many things in it any more. Nothing to count or tally. The only people there are visitors, strangers, or cut-throat property-dealers.And yet, for all that, still it stands, empty like a human heart.