February 2023 (iv)
logorrhea in paradise
Hardly surprising that, after a long afternoon of shitting liquid, the mind tries to summon some solidity, to summon the thoughts that most resemble language, the thoughts that try to make shapes in and of the world, to fix the world more firmly in the mind, even invent things about it, make up facts where it doesn’t know things or can’t recall them, anything to relieve the body’s thrall to the piece of tainted fish lodged somewhere in its large intestine, the thoughts that conjure things upon this beach faster than I can stop them, the mind running as the body clenches, the thoughts so acute as to be almost hallucinations, eyes looking desperately for stability in the hazy afternoon, half-limping through the soft volcanic sand, heels sinking unevenly, the thoughts that do whatever is required to keep the self from leaking away, to keep the dizziness and disgruntlement at bay, the thoughts that give everything possible significance and concordance, these weathered coconuts and plastic bottles rolling ashore like spent offerings, somehow, of aid, though of course they offer no help, and of course I am entirely beside the point, I am passing through, in fact something is passing through me, not at all comfortably, and I have wandered out here, with a pair of desperate eyes and a breastplate of deep-red sunburn, half-limping through the sand, looking for sense and beauty and relief like this loyal dog that runs in and out of the surf to watch his owner riding waves, the small dog barking with concern, dog to its master like me to my stomach, but the beach is so beautiful, the mind insists and is correct, surfboards twirling and a breeze picking up and people darkening into silhouettes against the now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, such a sight to see, though the mind struggles to see this and not the taunts of illness, the sea as some churning gastric sink, and so in a kind of truce between mind and body, between the need to think and the need to shit, comes the thought of some Castilian bastard walking down this same beach, a half-limping silhouette against the now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, squelching his choleric way not toward gold and glory but to this piece of driftwood where he can sit and hallucinate madly in old Spanish and expire into his trousers, just ass-pissing himself to death, no more oro for you big guy, his morrión rolling in the surf like a weathered coconut or discarded plastic, a ridiculous and no doubt common death to die in 15-whatever, the invaders of the tropics invaded by the tropics, see, this is the kind of thoughts I mean, thoughts that, while the body aches and swirls, attempt to make balance and ballast, artificial histories, an artificial solidity in language and associations, proof, perhaps, that this sort of writing-thinking is not a mere indulgence but a balm, for what else could provide solidity, aside from the electrolytes and chalky multicolored tablets swimming in my stomach, for this dizzy and disgruntled feeling, staggering down the beautiful beach, certainly dreams cannot provide solidity or escape, existing as they do somewhere between thought and language, too in league with one’s body to even pretend to surmount it, rooted in all sorts of involuntary processes, like my dream earlier that day of a bottle falling from a high shelf, which made me flick my hand out, my real hand, and wake up, a feverish dream-puppet, the dream no doubt a mere restaging of that day’s events, of the bottle of tequila that someone had sent sliding across the wooden table and knocking into a glass that exploded on the tile floor, exploded into pieces much the same shape as the pieces of leaves the leafcutter ants were marching across the path in the sand that I would later take here, to this beautiful beach and this now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, beachgoers like shadowpuppets against it, a large german shepherd bounding after driftwood, the small dog in and out of the surf, the coconuts and plastic like spent or mocking offerings of aid to me, as I walk and breathe to attempt solidity, the self just a gastrointestinal crisis ambling unevenly down the black, volcanic sand, the thought of glass shards and ant-sawed leaves making a congruency out of random dissolution that the mind seeks to settle the body with, as if these feeble likenesses could cure, who knew this tedious thought-writing could also be survivalism, like the madmen who must say out loud everything they see so as not to go insane, océano, croaks the choleric conquistador from his driftwood, names, after all, are the most obvious sort of artificial solidity, but there are many things without names at all, like the Castilian bastard’s thought of the enormous stones he saw farther down the coastline, spheres weighing some 10 tons, left behind by some former people, the Diquís people, who knows what he would have called them, who knows what they called themselves, where did I even come up with that, and he hallucinates many of these stones rolling up out of the ocean, immense and solid and igneous and ancient, rolling toward where he sits on his slimed piece of driftwood, as if in some death ritual of solidity and peace, he is encircled by the silence of these globos, which slowly start to levitate with each noisy deathward spurt, dark black eclipses of the now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, which a mere hour before had hammered the sea into gold, another skill of the Diquís people, apparently, hammering gold, that is, as I either read earlier or am inventing or even mistaking, turning into a silhouette myself, the sunset a gastric pink over an eternal churning bowl, the stomach making its own dumb metaphors, maybe that’s what the mind’s for, to outpace the other organs’ literal language, to draw the body away from its dissolution, to look, look, look at the weathered coconuts in the surf, which are all rolling toward me like some offering of aid, there are so many of them, and all else stands still, the surfers have disappeared, the sun beginning to slip behind the world, and the weathered coconuts begin to levitate and they are enormous primordial stones, solidity against the soup, eclipsing the now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, and suddenly there are horses, the memory of horses that rode along the shore the day before, they thunder riderless towards me and the Castilian bastard who is absolutely done for, his morrión can’t be seen, his body lolls in the rising tide as the Diquís stones descend, a thing can be practically anything but shit is just shit, one wants it gone, or at the very least not to be ruled by it, the mind enlarging itself to ease the hobbled body, one always wants to rule, of course, even to rule one’s own delirium, the word-torrent some deranged half-solution to defeat, an inverted release, here on the beautiful beach, something contracting and the pink sunset turning from floral to gastric again and the mind rushing to change it back to something else, figurative language an indulgence until it spares you from nausea, the sun, the now-yellow-now-orange disc of the sun, amid the twirling surfers and the large brown horses, surefooted in the black volcanic sand, thundering out of the lost clarity of yesterday, and the weathered coconuts and enormous stones now rolling around me in a perfect circle so as to fabricate some deep and ancient order of the world and the sun is an enormous molten stone some nameless god is slowly lowering into the sea. Oceáno, océano. Los globos. Los cocos. Clench and release. Perhaps the soul is just a stomach. Nameless god my ass, groans the body. The sun plops.
ben tapeworm
ben tapeworm’s almanac is amateur apocalypse pamphletry.To get new entries in your email inbox, please email bentapeworm@gmail.com to be added to the mailing list.