Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection

We were being careful. Not too careful, you see. Just careful enough to care. That’s about all. So, we were being careful, watching things, you see, you know, watching stuff happen, just in this careful way, just a hint you’d say if you were talking about a recipe for something, or no, how something tastes is more like it, yes, that’s it. So, yes, just a hint of careful. Not carefully hinting at something, no, you see? No. That’s not it. We were being careful. Careful damn it. That’s all. And the radio was playing. It was a song I knew. Nobody else knew it. It was a song, you know, that came on the radio a lot then. It wasn’t a good song, but a song you’d know if you heard it, though maybe you wouldn’t know the name, you’d know the song, you know? The radio was playing this song, this song I knew but didn’t know the name of, yes, this song that was playing and making me think certain things, certain peculiar things, you know like the things you think when you’re alone and you’re listening to a song that you know but that you don’t know the name of, and it’s not so good of a song, but you know it, and we were being careful, you know, real careful. I’m thinking those peculiar thoughts, and I’m being careful, and that song is playing, and I’m starting to want to sing along with the song, but I’m being so careful, you know, that I can’t really allow myself to start doing something like start singing along with a song that I know but don’t know the name of. There isn’t too much room for error. Not in a situation like this. No. There is not. That’s why we were being careful. That’s about all.

Shoot them in the toes.
Laughter is mostly authentic.

Halfway to the end. Almost there, but not there yet. Being somewhere is always better than being nowhere. No matter how careful you are, you know, you’ll always make the same mistakes. Okay, maybe not the same ones, not all the time, but sometimes you will make the same mistakes, mistakenly of course, but it could be, you know, that you might make them on purpose sometimes too, subconsciously of course. Well, maybe not “of course.” It just might be that sometimes it is on purpose that you might make the same mistakes twice, or more than twice too, without it being something that you’d have to assume would have to be done merely for some subconscious reason. But still, you know, mistakes happen. Accidents happen. Halfway isn’t close enough. Almost isn’t close enough. Being somewhere is never being nowhere, not even sometimes. No. Somewhere is somewhere, and nowhere is, well, nothing.

When we were being careful, and that song came on that I didn’t know the name of but that I knew the sound of, well, that was when I started thinking those peculiar thoughts. Like a thought about how “that” and “that” can sound different but look the same and sometimes when you read the word “that” you say the word “that” in your head, or rather the little voice in your head does, if a voice can be little, and it says, that voice that is very familiar to you, but that is not quite your own voice, that voice says “that” so that it sounds like “that” and it changes the whole meaning of what you are reading. It is a problem that there is no real help for. That there is no help for that is well known. Music might help. If you could read in music instead of words. But you can’t. Spelling “that” with an “e” so it looks like “thet” might help. But “thet” is not a word. So, I was being careful and thinking these types of peculiar things like that, that that is sometimes just that, that is, that’s that.

Being careful is not easy. Being careful is pretty damn hard when the radio is playing a song you can’t name but you can sing along with. A song that is familiar. A song that is making you think some pretty peculiar thoughts. And we were being as careful as we could. Our actions were flavored with a hint of careful. I found myself really wanting to sing this song that I didn’t know the name of, but I wouldn’t let myself sing because of how careful we were being. If something were to move, even make the slightest motion, like even say a rabbit shifting its paws around in the dirt, not that that would have happened there. No. Not like that. Not that. Not there. Not while we were being so careful. Okay. Maybe just a hint of careful, but careful enough, okay? No. There were not any rabbits around. There was no dirt. But, you know, just the slightest thing moving would have given us away. Okay. Say like me rubbing my nose. Scratching at an itch at the bottom of my nose, by the nostrils, where my nose often itches, that would be enough to give us away. Not like giving somebody away at a wedding. No. That would be different from this kind of giving away. Giving ourselves away by scratching at my nose was not something that I wanted to even think about. Not scratching my nose, but giving ourselves away that is. That is not what I wanted to think about. Though I didn’t want to think about scratching the itch on my nose either, because that would have definitely made it harder not to scratch my nose. Like, you know, when you think about doing something so much that it becomes hard not to do it. And the more you think about not doing the thing, like scratching an itch, the more you can’t resist doing it. Not doing the thing becomes harder and harder the more you try to think about not doing it, or think about doing it, you know, imagining yourself doing it, and then trying to not scratch, to not scratch that damn itch, that tingling feeling on the end of your nose, right by your nostrils, what some fancy people call nares, and the itching gets worse the more you don’t scratch. That’s what was happening to me when we were being careful and the radio was playing that song that I didn’t know the name of but that I wanted to sing along with. Singing along with the song was getting pretty hard to not do too. I wanted to sing the song that was playing on the radio, and I wanted to scratch my nose. Those two things were becoming more and more all I could think about. On top of that, I was also, you know, we were, being careful. Just a hint.

A casting call for the botched and bored and disenfranchised, the lonely and misanthropic, the misunderstood, the lame, the disillusioned, the carefree and whimsical and lost, the hardworking and moneyless, the custard walkers, the visionaries, the fearless, the brain-damaged, the dissidents and the immature and the grommet makers and the oglers and the hard-hearted and the bedwetters and the marooned and the sightseers and the jugglers and the bicycle riders and the spies and the careful.

So you get to be so careful, real careful you see, and we were being this kind of careful, all kinds of careful now, you see, really not as careful as we could have been, probably, but we were being pretty careful, probably more than just a hint of careful now, and I wasn’t scratching the itch on my nose, the itch in my nostrils, and I wasn’t singing the song I didn’t know the name of, the song I knew how to sing, I knew the words to the song, but we were being careful and I couldn’t sing and I couldn’t scratch an itch on my nose, and if any of us had made a move we would have been giving ourselves away, and I couldn’t stop thinking about scratching my nose, and the radio was playing that song, you know, and we were standing there being careful and just watching things happen, watching stuff, watching what happens when you stand there being careful, just stand there not moving, not even scratching your nose, not even making any motion at all, not singing, trying to not even breathe, trying, but, you know, you have to breathe, so just trying to do it without making any noise, you know, even though the radio was playing, but that radio was just playing in my head, don’t ask my how I figured this out, but I was being careful standing there and it just occurred to me that only I could hear that song playing on the radio, that song that I didn’t know the name of, and that I didn’t know the name of it because it didn’t have a name, it was just a song that maybe didn’t even exist except in place in my head where it played on the radio that was inside of my head also.

We were being so careful. So very careful. So careful that we didn’t forget to hammer in the nails. We hammered in the nails. The nails made noise when the hammer hit them. Where the hammer hit them on the head they made noise. The hammer made noise when it hit the tops of the nails. The hammers hit the nails on the head where the noise they made was made. We hammered the nails into the boards with the hammers that made noise where they hit the nails on their heads. All of our hammering of the nails made noise when we hammered the nails into the boards. The boards we hammered the nails into with the hammers were filled with nails in the end because of our hammering. We were being careful with our hammering. So careful. So very careful. It was pretty hard to be that careful while we were hammering. But we were. We were very careful.

Being cheerful is sometimes even harder than being careful.

A lot of noise we were making with our hammering. A lot of noise so it was hard to be careful about not giving ourselves away. We were hammering and making all that noise and it no longer seemed possible to not give ourselves away. I started singing. Nobody knew the song I was singing except for me. I knew the song I was singing because I heard it playing on the radio in my head. It was playing the whole time we were being careful about not giving ourselves away. I couldn’t resist the urge to sing the song anymore. The song didn’t have a name. I sang the song loud now. The song gave me away. The song wasn’t a song that anybody else could sing. I was singing the song alone. There was no we. I was alone. We were not hammering. We were not being careful. I was singing. I was hammering. I was alone. I was no longer being careful. I scratched the itch on my nose. I gave myself away. That was that.