Eventually you’re going to do it: approach the orange object, pick it up and wonder. What is it? Something you got for free on the plane, or something that got left behind in the sand? Two people who are not and were lovers, get on a plane. They already acquired the tickets. On the plane, like everywhere, they are surrounded by a lot of orange objects, but only one of them experiences it. The other? One day the right one will come along, the right orange object. You will discover there are words in it that don’t try to contain you but nor do they erase the possibility that your body could be breathing in and out in that environment. Which? The one on the page or the one you just noticed is surrounding it? A beach scene maybe, everyone likes those. You shrug, and your hands begin to itch, wanting pages. No more hands! I’m sick of hearing about everybody’s hands, like oysters! The expert begins to shout, a baritone voice-over that shakes the whole scene: the sand, beach chairs, the other vacationers, the towels getting wet, slaps of water from the pool as the volume increases: Whenever you hear hands, tear the page!
While you examine the orange object, I go back in time, start tearing sentences, then hair. Like it’s the nineties and feeling is over and you just keep reaching for the glove box at that rest stop forever. You start to put on the gloves from the box but I want you to be with the orange objects, I want to watch them disturb, rearrange your cellular functions, the workings of your internal organs. Nothing is leaking but there is rearrangement, careful redesign. You can put the book down but not deny that this is happening. This book is stronger than five hundred thousand animals taking off your shirt. I am shouting from the next vacation rental over. This book is smarter than your shirt. You are banging on the wall. This book gives me a technological advantage in the form of time. But we’re not lovers anymore, you yell back, you don’t need any such advantage. You are getting softer, like someone else’s hands, and you’re right, but this book is still banging on my chest like an extra limb, making me over into someone who knows how to want, to read it or say.
