I felt the need to say something, even though I knew that I had no right to
say it. In vain I cast around looking for the words that would express the
bind I had fallen into. For years that was all I had time for. All the while it
seemed like I was being drawn toward a blinding light, the black light of
a dying star. Having become accustomed to this impoverished range of
experience it was difficult to admit to feelings of frustration. Eventually I
decided to move my operations to a more humane arena. I found myself
talking to a lot of people I did not know, people it would have been
impossible to know, if this was my real life. Again and again I felt a lack
of inspiration, the operation of mechanical devices clicking in where once
I thought spontaneity was meant to be the rule. I don’t want to give the
wrong impression here. I enjoyed myself, how could I deny that. In this
world, the possibilities were never-ending, one after another they would
come, overwhelm me and in their wake leave a small accretion of dust
stuck to the surface of my surroundings. Perhaps what I enjoyed most
was licking up the dust, savouring it, inventing a universe of taste based
on its range of variations, which admittedly was rather small. Pleasure too
I found in observing the mark of my tongue, the trail of clean surface that
was the effect of my licking. In the quiet moments I would often sit back
and reflect. Invariably snatches of music and conversation from the night
before would well up, and I would remember the places where people
touched me, either by intent or accident. I made maps of my body,
locating the most pleasurable places to touch, rating them, and assigning
the stimulation value of each particular point of contact that had been made.
These things kept me busy and served as a great consolation, a disturbing
fact that really was foreign to my way of thinking. Such were the small
compromises exacted by a life lived outdoors; who could claim to be exempt?