sketch: waste (11/19/11)

My mind is coiled on itself like an intestine. Thoughts crawl through it: the chewed-up remains of what my senses have feasted on. There are some perceptions that I lose or leave behind; I assimilate others into the substance of my life. Then there’s the rest, what passes through me and exists in speech or writing; self-expression is an act of defecation. If I abandon the habit of letting things out, these things clog the plumbing, and I feel constipated. Although it causes me some discomfort to produce these waste products, although the activity saps my energy and its products inspire my instinctual disgust, the task satisfies me too. A sense of pleasure accompanies the knowledge that I’m doing something necessary.

Our bodies produce waste as a matter of fact. We have systems in place to hide these products, to segregate them from what feeds us, to expel them from the places where we live and sleep. We leave them for the bacteria and fungi that drag them into the earth’s dirty subconscious, transforming them by the alchemy of life back into flower and branches and leaves. The vocation of writing completes an ecosystem. The act of speech sates the hunger of a living silence. And the outpouring of song caresses the vibrating air; we give to the world from what we have, and, having no further use for it, escape our burdens, and forget them.