Chekhov’s Trust
Can’t you ever trust anything? I don’t know but my dad used to wear a hat that said Question Everything in the last decade of his life. Then he withered up and lost his mind. Can’t you never trust nothing?
I want to tell you that it’s okay. I only mean that in regard to your decision to have a reason to continue trying, if you have to. The rest of what goes on inside our heads is total hell.
Yes, there are short stories in hell. There are flowers in hell. Stairs to great wide-open fields where people fuck and do yoga and listen to various recordings of human bullshit. They never get over it.
There are birds of every implementation of reality. There are beads of glass that let you see as through your eyes at any time in any life. It’s like a “science museum” where you’re not sure you “like being left alone like this,” not for this “last time” in your “life.” The rest is a mystery.
I have a solution. Stop doing what you’re doing. You can’t continue what you’ve been doing. You have to change. If you change, you’ll save everyone. If you don’t change, then this is hell and will remain hell for forever left to pay.
Just nod your head if you comply. The rest will be completely taken care of.
What, don’t you trust me?
Free Speech
It’s not a terrible idea to try training yourself how to eat pools and pools and pools of human blood. That way you’ll never have to worry about drowning in pools and pools and pools of human blood. You might gain some weight, but then you’re also just more buoyant.
In this way I plan to remember everyone who ever lived on an individual basis, as determined by my imagination of how their blood has different flavors. This helps me to feel I know I know each individual person better on their own terms.
Did you know the only windows in my office are so clouded with all the ideas no one will ever put into actual effect outside their own ragged imaginations, and barely even then? The more I try to clear a view, the more I am reminded of the importance of my own life, as determined by the fact that I’m supposed to be giving a speech today on the importance of questioning everything except the importance of questioning everything.
I’d like to start by reminding you that it’s not a terrible idea to knock the block off the next person who tells you it’s not a terrible idea to try training yourself how to eat pools and pools and pools of human blood. That way you’ll never have to worry about wondering when you’re going to have to start worrying about drowning in pools and pools and pools of human blood.
Blake Butler is the author of eight books of prose and nonfiction, most recently Alice Knott. He lives in Baltimore. His book recommendation is A Very Easy Death by Simone De Beauvoir.
