The Fly

You will say this has been said before. Why do you insist on dwelling on the depressing fact that one day you are not going to wake up? Not to beat a dead horse, you will no longer be perceiving the world. Can you get arms around that or the fact that your dying has no more significance than that of the death of one of the ants in the pile you step on creeping out of the cracks in pavement or the irritating fly you wreak vengeance on with your swatter!

Read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

TOE

 

photo: StoneIsland 24

TOE is the acronym for "time of the essence." If anyone ever asks where you got it, just answer "podiatrist." You might send a foot fetishist, someone who likes to "shrimp" or suck toes to a psychoanalyst. Remember Freud's "Rat Man" who was fixated on his anus? But if you really want to get under the surface, it's probably better to look at the metatarsal, which lies at the very heart of the human sole.

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kissing

"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt (1907-8)

Do you remember the first person you ever made out with, the way your lips found those of your lover and seemed to freely search out a cavity of the body that's even more intimate than the genitals? You were in love, but because you hadn't learned to fuck, you soon grew bored and even tired of the other's mouth. After all saliva is not particularly known to be an aphrodisiac. Spittle was all that was left from your moment of passion. Only later in life when you learned that romance was nature's way of facilitating the shoals of desire, did the magic of kissing then return, as something once passed over and taken for granted in the rush for consummation. 

read "Chicago" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Hemorrhoid

 

Naomi entreating Ruth and Oprah to return to Moab (William Blake)

Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein have given perversion a bad name. They make the Marquis de Sade, with his 120 Days of Sodom, a good guy. Well at least Sade didn't gaslight like the President. Words play a role in transgression since they're the way one iterates desire, words and actions, that is, and certain words are almost impossible to spell. Take hemorrhoid or Naomi.  You're likely to strike out with the former. It sounds like hemmorrhoid or hemorhoid. Niomi, Nioami are frequent misspellings. It's hit or miss to get to hemorrhoid. Hemorrhoids are not celestial objects, like asteroids Quite the contrary. They're part of the GI rather than solar system.

read "Cri de Coeur" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Too Solid Flesh

"O that this too too solid flesh would melt" is the key to the Booker prize winning Szalay novel. If you were one of the doubters who felt the out of body inner body experience of Istvan, the central character, was a bit of the been there done that, then you will be chastened by two pages near the end. Spoiler Alert: they are two blank pages that are two of the most eloquent expressions of nullity in all of literature. There is a scene in Sean Baker's Anora, when the whole world of the movie's central characters is destroyed. It's not even a matter of starting all over again or rebuilding. Flesh does melt. Cars do crash changing the lives of their occupants forever.

The Paradox

Do you feel like the tortoise or Achilles in the famous paradox? Or a member of a member of the Trolley Problem focus group? Will you finally decide to run down the one unlucky soul in lieu of the group? What a hero you will be to everyone but the loved ones of that unlucky soul who gets run over! Are you increasingly in a rush to take care of things, knowing your end is growing increasingly near? It’s not a morbid  thought. It’s no different than making your arrangements, choosing the site and even the stone or maybe the urn in which your ashes will lay.

A Last Dream

"Man Behind Bars" by Franz Kafka

You haven’t experienced this yet, since if you did, you wouldn’t be here to tell about it. But imagine your last dream. You’re stuck inside and there’s no way out. It’s a dream in which there is a long hall with lots of black steel doors. They could be monks cells or prison cells, unforgiving, solitary. You run up and down the corridor looking for a way out. There is no way the inmates can help you since they themselves are locked in forever. It’s the ultimate silent retreat. Just in passing you think: How are they fed? However, the idea is soon forgotten. You have more pressing matters at hand like how to get out of this nightmare and back to life?