There Are No Hidden Meanings

That is the title of a book of photographs. Inside the book, there is a photo of a man on the toilet, in Rodin’s Thinker’s Pose.

This is why I’m not writing about Chas.

This is why I’m writing about the art on the cover of Westword instead.

If it doesn’t make sense to you, there is this: You don’t make sense to me, either, and you are all the more beautiful for it.

I love you with your certainty. You are foreign and sweet, delicacies behind the bakery window when I have no money at all.

I love my Siblings Two-of-Six and Three-of-Six, who are at home in their skins. I love Ms Merry Peri, who is astute about human complexities and yet can draw a straight line.

They know what’s what, what’s true. They know which things are true only for them, and what is true for the world at large.

I have too much Walt Whitman in me. I am kaleidoscopic and wholly permeable. When I set out to think my way out of a paper bag, I only become the paper.

This way of being amuses my siblings to a point, and then bemuses them, and then drives them to exasperation. Me, too.

We love what we can’t have. I love certainty. I love to follow a strong lead. But I can’t comprehend it.

I am strong and smart and powerful. I am not at the whim of my thoughts; one must be strong to steer a course as a kaleidoscopic, wholly permeable being.

Still, I covet the sweets in the bakery window. I yearn to stick my arm through the glass (gashing skin, drawing blood), to steal a bite of that pastry. I would let it melt on my tongue, swallow and feel it become me.

This can never happen. Certainty is foreign to my nature. My system rejects it violently, as it would poison.

What does this mean?

I am kaleidoscopically thinking about Chas. This is not confusion; it is abandoning straight lines.

What do I think?

I have clear thoughts, strong opinions. I write circles around them; they cannot bear the weight of a straight line.

I cannot speak more clearly. So,

I keep my own counsel.

I write about the art.

There are no hidden meanings.