Forget Marks Forever

My face is spot country, she said, as she rummaged her fingers through her hair.

No-go, he said, and blew air into his drink. The air went bumpity into the liquid, releasing a drill of bubbles.

Don’t you sense, Mukund, that I am aggrieved and would prefer it if you didn’t resort to unkind hullabaloos of words.

Well. You call me Mukund. Do not brave on about kindness when you call me by names like Mukund. But anyway, this napkin is snot. Why do you care that it has Forget Marks in blue all over it? Tell it to avaunt, and quit thy sight. Macbeth said that to a ghost. You’ll be saying it to something equally puerile.

Mukund. The ghost was not puerile. It was subtitle to Macbeth’s livid guilt. If emotions make a man, then the ghost was as real as the emotion it serviced. The ghost was as real as Macbeth.
My unhappiness about spots is not puerile, for to me
these spots are testimony
to the fact that I have no control over my material.

But you have control over what you think of your material.

That is such cock.

Why not call me Macbeth? Why Mukund?

Because you’re not tragic or epic or a part of my deadly design.
And that is why I like you, more or less.
Besides, I’m not calling you Mukund. I’m using the name as the precipitate, for I feel that it is just stout enough for this atmosphere, for the lights and for the food we’re eating.
It’s like a short, dumb, angry plant. Rooted like.

And that’s how you want me?
Short dumb and angry?

No, I don’t want stout. I don’t want stout or sturdy or any of this. But this is what we have and we must make do. This frame this frame, I feel myself despairing. Despairing in shy, unhealthy ways. It’s too firm, this life we have.

We aren’t complacent, you know. Even if you've had yourself believe that we middle, that we are framed. We do – as you say – anger over. Isn’t that sign of salvage - a sign that we are not entirely lost to rootedness?

Yes. In meted ways we show anger. Meted, muted, in quantities just amusing enough to last our lifetime. But what of this anger? We don’t remember – not in obsession, or clarity – where it began. It’s like a fog of lather without the soap. It distracts us and fucks with our eyes, but tells us little of our source or voyage. Or non-voyage: our stasis.

Ah the check's come. We end our day in pleasant irony.
My sweetheart... My tube of jelly... We have facts.
And the facts come by way of
bills, jobs, furniture, blinkers.
Facts are only ever born of frames.