Shutter Speed

*Two men. Well dressed. Sitting over espresso.
A giant angel in a golden prism painted* 

*the roof of*

*stylized men’s room at* 

*Café
Klieg.*

Reading the list always seems to make it get flustered. Why is this? What is missing?
Why is it always just out of reach?

... ... ... ... ****

*Sunday morning. Bottles of**milk shimmering in a 

wooden box.*
A bird at the windowsill. Empty milk glass on the wash*basin.*
*Girl on backyard tire swing. Bee sting on 

left knee.*

When the Plainclothes Barrister in the Parking Garage accosts Mio Mae, Mio Mae sits on a chair there, overseeing passing fancies of no consequence, perched at an odd angle before the list and a pitcher of ice water, the latter motionless upon the surface of the cluttered desk in the parking garage. Harsh underground fluorescent lighting. A bookshelf stacked with a stately accumulation of rare volumes lurks by the old Wagen, outdated verse and such. Some stacks form tilting towers to our left. Papers are crumpled beneath the transparent jug, the fluid contained within amplified, the print all dancing visual distortions. A trick of light is committed to the space of the interview. Is this an interview? Mio Mae recalls no scheduled interview, but the interviews are after all endless...  

The interviewer run-walks up to the desk, hesitates, running a finger along coarse edges of paper. The interview is not actually an interview, though, as established. We feel pretty safe determining this Plainclothes Barrister in the Parking Garage a Criminal Assailant, and instead of editorializing any further on the subject—or instead of commencing to properly editorialize in the first—we refer y'all now...to...THE TAPE—

WE ADVISE: DO NOT ADVISE US

WHAT IT IS THAT'S

IN OUR REMIT

SIT THE FUCK DOWN. Mio Mae sits facing him. He puts pressure on the shoulders to prevent Mio Mae from standing. 

*Two men stop to talk. They exchange fierce gestures and their faces redden. A car backfires.*
*A cat bats a toy* car around* in a small puddle. He leaves paw prints in a sandbox. He disappears from sight, tracks of mud* marking his path.*   

*A film by a French director 

which attempts to explain 

his last one.*

PLAINCLOTHES BARRISTER IN PARKING GARAGE: Are you ready to explain to me what all your shit's about?

Folds hands together. Surface of the desk. Holds folded hands together. There. Folden.

P.B.P.G. (continuing): Let’s begin with the list, shall we?

Shuffles spot causes chair creek ever so.

Mio Mae: Yes, let’s.

Uncomfortable is sometimes hard to get down t'business going through the motions. Any possibility of possible intimacy. Intimacy redundancy. Contemporaries.

P.B.P.G.: Some people, and it is probably better on all fronts if I don’t mention any names here, I’ll leave that to your…shall we say…discretion. People have raised certain…certain objections concerning the list. They say you got water on the brain 'cause you's a soft old drunk. Now what I suppose these people question is the very purpose and nature of listing itself. Why list? What is to be gained that could not be gained in, say, a poem…or…perhaps, say…I don’t know…

Very goddamn much like a perfectly normal interview situation, fuck's sake.

*Love without sex.*

*without*
*Sex without love.*

*Pliers in the snow. Love*

and Labour.*

YEV

M.M.: Well your question as I understand it I—I think I do—it's really (cough) two questions. Or rather the questions you almost imagine you could maybe ask, heh heh—certain critical interests (chuckles)—concerning—well—concerning the purpose and nature of listing—well, you see—that’s just it. The purpose is in the nature. If we look at the nature of listing, that right there is already almost maybe a purpose, or rather some purpose is exposed by the very nature of our having begun to search for the nature—I mean now of listing. But also, you know, of—of anything really…

 
*Tabatha’s listening to Boris’s heartbeat with her head against his exposed chest.*
*Boris’s current* lack of thoughts. His not listening to anything.*
*A letter not quite sent. Almost.*
15.   A nun on the nicotine patch.

The interviewer looks eyes with aspect of. For some reason this. Making it possible to.

M.M.: To list you must throw everything away and start at a zero placeholder place. Beckett’s novels were lists. Molloy is a device through which listing may be measured on a kind of nerve meter as Artaud would have it. Frequencies beyond the zero but never more than zero. Prospective zero-ish flourishes out on the limbic precipice. To list things as they are presented before consciousness, and provided a sort of fluid residence there, we must begin with a first object, a one intensity that established the tone, an entirely made-up and arbitrary idiot thing, such as either one of us. We must bring with this object, this one, all traces of that which precedes the actual act of listing, a point of departure which is completely arbitrary, although necessary, and which will condition all that which is to branch out from it in degrees or in precipitate sheddings. Variations on a single tone, like eastern music. The location of consciousness proper. In short, two and then three and then back to zero. Bam! The higher you count, always counting back to a rangy placeholder zero from which you always again emerge.

16.  Halloween costumes in a Dumpster.
17.  A skier who bit his tongue off in California when he fell off a large cliff.  
*The exchange of a syringe hidden in an empty pack of Camels.*

P.B.P.G.: Wait one holy second...

Fuck a rubber duck. E're we go...

P.B.P.G.: Would you then say that listing, as you see it, could serve as a model 

for the purification 

of expression?

 Gonna hurl.

M.M.: Well, fuck's sake, you know, that’s all well and good, to talk that way, 

but we—you see, why say that? I mean that exactly? Purification. Expression. I 

mean, Jesus, I should know, you know—I should know about listing—listing! After all…

Down at the list stupidly confusing adjusts metal piece in right ear with his right hand whisper to conspirators.  

M.M. (continuing): I made the fuckin’ thing, didn’t I? 

I mean, buddy, come on now: PURIFICATION? 

There is nothing pure about making these goddamned lists all day fuckin’ long.

And little good it all does me. Go fuck yourself.
     

P.B.P.G.: Look...

M.M.: No, no, look—I’m sorry, ouch—you're hurting me—I’m really sorry. Just 

tired, tired! Jes haven’t slept a wink…you know?…and….and—and you know 

what?—you make a point there. For real, you do. Absolutely.

Matter despite how unbelievable sound of life-death, namely: my-you life and my-you death. Why hell else 

would peddling art destroy? Have lost seventy or so pounds. Have all lost all wives. All have all the heart 

problems going and cannot for the life of us get it up, short with the little miss after having come up short 

with same, but still this horrible impulse to resist in the face of death, guided by the angels on the roof 

of some dump.

M.M. (continuing): I got a little upset there for a moment, I know, 

and I am deeply 

sorry, just let me tell you, 

just so as you know. My dad, you see, he was a Catholic.

Insanely hard pill to swallow. A heavily and horribly purified pill, Jones. 

And you said purification there, in your rank bluster, fella, and you got 

me on thinking about this damned grace thing and, you know, a synapse 

doesn’t fire right and it all goes 

proper red. 

P.B.P.G.: Fine, fucker. You like you eyeballs picked at 

like grapes?

Rutting through trash with a fine-toothed comb.
A beating from men in suits and a free ride to the outskirts of town.

P.B.P.G.:: No need for histrionics, dramatics, or impassioned outbursts 

of an otherwise unprofessional nature. 

We can continue calmly and we can discuss whatever 

you wish to discuss or not discuss all that 

which you would rather that we not

or, alternatively

you're binned and we go and we just bin you.

Interviewers are an odd variety of beast, always sort of funny 

in more or less this exact way…

M.M.: Fine, thank you. Well yes, then, I would like to suggest that what you call 

purification with respect to expression…

Fucked-up thought processes interrogator-enthusiast a Strange. Contents of the private existence never quite 

verified.

M.M (continuing): …is nothing 

more than 

a logical extenuation

if you’ll excuse it

my putting it... 

Light reflected but by what exactly?
Crazy about pottery.          

23.   Since when 

are there 

red school buses?

M.M. (continuing): The numbers themselves reflect 

nothing other than the language of listing. 

They, at a certain point, must be 

removed from our understanding

how the list produces meaning 

or identification i

n the reader. The numbers must be put aside 

if we are to take out of the list its infinite 

possible lines of connection and

abstract cohesion….

its various fragmented systems of…linkage…

Linkage?

M.M. (continuing): But listing

listing

and sir I love your 

machine sir

I'm pointing at

listing breaks authority 

marginalizes all holding pattern franchise platforms. 

Fuck. 

I mean, when I list I works with connections

interfaces

points, all points

—conjunctive, disjunctive— 

Pornographic! 

Bodies meld, forms meld, multiplicities meld. 

The I, the subject of the list, is 

infinite multiplicity

morphology. 

The list makes sense of senselessness

all senselessness

without centre…

Wait…

M.M. (continuing): I list. 

They point a gun at me 

and I keep up with the listing 

they shoot me and I stop 

so I list.

Dangerous yap, aardvark's vark. You's sho' as fucked, yup…

M.M. (continuing): And 

 fuck it. That’s right, sir: 

FUCK IT! 

YOU HEAR ME, FUCKER? 

AND FUCK YOU GLUEY-EYED 

ON A SWING 

WHILE WE'RE AT IT

YOU SOULLESS FUCKIN FAILED NURSEMAID—

 But still the interviewer is the ideal Other, superior even to the psychoanalysts…

M.M. (continuing): As my lists are clearly bereft of any 

meaning, or so it seems, at very least, when one first directs one’s 

attention towards them, I find it a very valuable operation going 

through a methodical defence or breakdown of the whole jimmy,

but you ain't privy, bitch, bein' a shivvy. Can you flip-flappin' 

dig it, Jack-son?! 

Of the hidden meaning inherent within 

bitter liquorice twist. 

You Sodom and 

Gomorrah, you, in your idiot clothes, 

waiting to get rubbed out...

Pigtails

P.B.P.G.: Cutie pie! You get carried away. And the 

thing is: you get carried away, 

waterhead, and you'll get carried ooff.

M.M: Try it, Jackson.

A wound sustained in infancy leaves a scar 

that can only be removed by lasers.
Lithographs in the mail from Rome.
The last leg of a long journey. 

The driver is tired and nods off to the radio. 

His children are with his ex-wife overseas.

West of here there is no more west.
Golf addiction.
Pederasty.
Glandular dysfunctions.
Asteroid fever.
Legs dangling over the fence, she makes a face 

like sucking on a lemon. The French doors 

blow shut and something 

falls 

to the floor.

Flourish of activity doors swing open and three men in white and a bunch 

more people all audible on the TAPE and BANG! knock chair backward 

bounce head off floor looking up two men holding down other finding a vein 

with the syringe he has produced from his lapel. 

P.B.P.G.: I gave you every chance. 

You brought this on yourself. This one’s had it.

…Feeling…very…sleepy…

The last hour of any given journey.
Four more heartbeats.
The end or the not end. Life and death divorced.
Calm. Alertness.

Mio Mae

Final Words on TAPE

Crazy Fuckin Garbled