Always knew it'd be like this

when we were in the kitchen to see the face of collective affection, of a lived ethics, always about to be made and yet. not. The practice of happiness – against everything the world as it is aims at – is subversive when it’s collective I copy down the notes and outside everything is either damp and gray or expectant with it. I’m in here on my lunchbreak waiting for the budding by which to read the glow Erika had it at the bar as I sat across from her bumped and brushed all evening by the passersby I do not spill my drink I only want to be fooled into embodied group joy – misguided, drunk, momentary – or not. I only want for the bump to transform us into lasting affinity. The real possibility of this which we forget which I was forgetting sitting there across from Erika, the strength of Nina’s “Feelings," her plea to the audience, that unseen multitude, for a sing-a-long and receiving no -thing. Not a chorus in the bunch. Which, as Nina knows on her face and fingers as they dwindle on the keys, is a kind of food. Instead we - perhaps I shouldn’t speak for others - instead I just knock my head against the can and gulp the paint all day and ask what’s so hard about moving about and to breathe. It’s hard to see what might be budding clearly even at the Marina though it's a day off and Andrew and Paul and I read the Times looking at all that water and Paul even told a joke but that slush in the lungs does not leave the body. So easily. I’d passed by a woman she said Hello Miss Happy Monday To You and I was startled by the kindness of it I wanted to embrace her but only mumbled Thanks You Too and kept walking down Grand untransformed. We might as well sell it for money. We might as well call it a Feeling and nothing else. Bifo says friendship and creativity make the existence of bridges possible. Friends our bodies. The paint cans the gulping standing there in the kitchen by the light of the hood lamp bottles clinking and gleaming and aching.

It’s / just / one / of / those / things.