Microserfs

into the city and we did a brain scan to check for stroke damage or clots and stuff.

“They injected all sorts of isotopes into me and I found myself part of a literal body/machine system — being bodily radioactive — and inserted like a fuel rod into a body-scanning machine. I remember saying, to myself, ‘So this is the feeling of being a machine.’ I felt more curious about death than I felt afraid; I felt glad to be no longer human for a few brief minutes.”

“Was there a blood clot?” I asked.

“No. Simple sunstroke. And the feeling of my being a machine evaporated quickly, too. But the whole incident made me decide to discover my body, pronto. Here,” she said, scratching my tender inner forearms lightly with her fingernails, sending me into paroxysms of delight. “How does that feel?”

“Glrmmph.”

“Just as I thought. People who do repetitive work on keyboards tend to have highly erogenous forearms and shoulder cuffs. Now, you scratch me.”

I did, and then we scratched forearms together, and I felt like the two of us were in a nature documentary on mating African veld animals.

“Of course,” she said, “you’ll have to learn all of this stuff, and you’re going to have to reciprocate on me.”

“Body 101 — sign me up now.”

“Daniel …”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever been held before?”

“You always ask me these embarrassing, left-field questions. What do you mean, have I ever been held before?”

“Exactly what I said. Have you?”

“Why, ummm …” I thought about it. “No.”

“I thought so.”

I realized that I envied Karla’s way of just talking about whatever was on her mind. She’s fearless, exploring her theories and neuroses with the conviction that self-knowledge will bring the solutions. The more I notice this, the more I admire this.

We did spoons for a while, and then she said, “I remember being young, in school, being told that our bodies would yield enough carbon for 2,000 pencils and enough calcium for 30 sticks of chalk, as well as enough iron for one nail. What a weird thing to tell kids. We should be told our bodies can transmutate into diamonds and wine goblets and teacups and balloons.”

“And diskettes,” I added.

* * *

Q: If there were two of you, which one would win?

Jeffersonian individualism

victim

winner

loser

thief

http://www.city.palo-alto.ca/

Lexus.cel phone.traffic.

My body type was in last year.

We can no longer create

the feeling of an era . . . of time being

particular to one spot in time.

WEDNESDAY

Bug ranted a bit about Lego in the afternoon while we ate Arrowroot cookies and bounced on the trampoline. The air was cold and our breath visible. We were all wearing laundry-day junk clothes and we looked like scarecrows flailing about. Why are we all so hopeless with our bodies?

Bug said, “You know what really depresses the hell out of me? The way that kids nowadays don’t have to use their imagination when they play with Lego. Say they buy a Lego car kit — in the old days you’d open the box and out tumbled sixty pieces you had to assemble to make the car. Nowadays, you open the box and a whole car, pre-fucking-built, pops out — the car itself is all one piece. Big woo. Some imagination-challenger that is. It’s total cheating.”

I got to thinking of my own Lego superstitions. “When I was young, if I built a house out of Lego, the house had to be all in one color. I used to play Lego with Ian Ball who lived up the street, back in Bellingham. He used to make his house out of whatever color brick he happened to grab. Can you imagine the sort of code someone like that would write?”

“I used to build with mixed colors …” said Bug.

“What do I know?” I said, pulling my foot out of it.

Karla cut in, “I had this friend, Bradley, who had a major Lego collection and I’d cheat, lie, and steal to go to his house and play with it. Then one day Bradley’s mother put his Lego in the bathtub to wash it off. It was never the same — diseased, sort of — stinking, like the water was turning into feta cheese inside the plastic tubes of the locking devices. I think his memories of Lego must be pretty different from my own.”

Bug said, “For designing games, Lego makes a great quickie simulator for figuring out mazes for gaming levels.”

“You’ve designed games before?” I asked.

“I’ve done everything you can do on computers. I’m 31.”

Maybe we underestimate Bug. When I stop and think about him, he’s so full of contradictions — it’s like there’s one big piece of him, that if only I knew it, it would make sense of everything.

Since Michael’s offers came in, we’ve all become really quiet, I’ve noticed. We’re all mulling it over. Our doors are closed; phone calls are being made to the 415 and 408 area codes. Karla says we’re all trying to figure out what we really need in life, as opposed to what we simply want.

A weird shiatsu moment: Karla focused on a piece of my chest, just above the Xyphoid Process (that weird thing in the middle of your ribs) and *bang* out of the blue I started bawling. I couldn’t stop. So I guess I have memories hidden away that I don’t think about.

* * *

1999: The people were lying on the ground.

Demonize the symbolic

analysts.

You're smarter than TV.

So what?

Uranium and Beethoven.

Define random

MFD-2DD

Ezekiel

Sony

THURSDAY

A random sort of day.