Rarely has opportunity for public visibility limited Virgil’s sensibility, particularly in how he delivers his work to an audience in what appears to be his being in a state of seamlessness—if, or as long as he can succumb to his vision, one that finds itself most precise, underwater.
Virgil’s vision remains as clear in the pool as possible, but in order to engage in critique, he must return to some basics. Does he pound on a table to make a point? Does he present a song of addiction and recovery to mark his emergence as a worthy body, or is Virgil a taker, and a big mouth, a leaker, or even, a Diva?
In one video he watches, Virgil learns (or in this case re-learns) what his father taught him: how to both self-protect and to violate. This, Virgil thinks, is what makes him fight-ready, most anytime.
To shield his face with his arms, and to strike with the hardest part of these, the bones in the outer forearms, the elbows:
These are the weapons he uses to open up an internal monologue.
Here’s the thing. Virgil is full of a need to be alone to enter the quiet of his imagination. But also, he likes to be stretched, and to have fun. In this sense, Virgil is always equipped to do battle with whomever, and is by nature, confrontational, perhaps, because of this.
The luxury?—The anger he holds at the periphery of his awareness.
Virgil has often had to use the skills that his father, Not Forgetting, to Remind has passed onto him. He uses them to do damage as he can, in defense, of course, leaping in the air to land on someone else’s collarbone on the dance floor. Dumb, but still, rather than return to the club to be stabbed, he was 86’ed for like two weeks, and in between Virgil ran for miles pretending to encounter the assailant, guards held up in the air—he was warned by BottomFeeder: He was up here looking for you, and he had a knife.
Tough, maybe, but only enough to protect the stomach and the eyes.
Skills Virgil holds close to his heart, skills he hones—
In other words, Virgil practices to be ready.
In one sense, his readiness keeps him directed towards a future that includes moving as easily as possible from defense to offense: to slay is to move forward, to offend in the face of casual and daily assault, right?
Do you find yourself pouring out the extra coffee from the cup, or are you concerned that there might be syringes in the trash at Starbucks, if you are so employed?
Did you think the world that you wanted to enter was there?
Did you understand the fantasy of your neighbor’s as your own,
or did you snatch groceries from a porch as a paperboy?
Did you want to sweep out the store for pay?
Do you still imagine opening and serving wine with aplomb?
Do you pound and pound?
After the meeting in the basement in the City with the Metal Sky, Virgil received an email from Wite-Out that he mostly expected, because in the end being a germ is a way of life for her. Tone: Lunatic. As the Race Drops began to build, there was a warning that Butch sent, a warning of severe thunderstorms, the urgency that delays any haste, and the rush of the rain, pushes Virgil into a useable past.
President Curious has died.
It’s not the fault of anyone, but the black president, former—
Is to be erased—Virgil’s anger in what is gone, and who is lost, his body gone, too—the feeling is not the mourning, but the complexity of its attempted erasure, in his, and the joke in who replaces whom:
We’ve forgotten about the “we.”
In the video he shot, Virgil wears his silicone swim cap in the basement, trying to look out at the fists that are not coming, but still he dodges those, and weaves, still he feels the pull of the transmission as it jolts between gears, seemingly involuntary movements, and then propulsion.
Apparently the Metal Sky had other plans for Virgil. Plans more urgent. The drops came out of nowhere. He sensed the sky was tightening, but Virgil had no idea how to react, other than with fear.
Are they coming for me?
Will they vestibule my black azz?
Will I, in the heat of the paint, chew my horseshoe out, open
mouth guard, and my team, refuse to go to the OrangeBLOWHOLE’s
new home after winning it all? Will we? Not go?
Will I be shot pregnant while holding a knife,
or will I die from a wound to the hip, shot in a baseball field?
It’s not as if these events are even in the same universe as Virgil’s encounter outside of the basement post-performance, panel, whatever it was—but still, his encounter felt real, a track, a pattern, a record of publication that is already filed in “DivData,” Virgil’s University Work Aggregating tool: for later reference, and ultimately mo’ money, mo’ money mo’ money.
Virgil walks far ahead from the writing, or moves far enough to take a call, to find an insect’s white egg sack—is that a sweet pupa—to reveal a date, to promise something out of the urgency of the line drive which is actually Psycho Democratic Gunfire!
To extract himself from the scene and subject—Here is the scenario:
Wite-Out wants to command everything, and so sometimes does Stream, and so does Butch, and so once in awhile, does Love—
In another sense, all of these characters attempt to corral another body that, arguably, can’t be.
So any agent against, is an offense, and in the end, out of the periphery, cartwheels enact, and given the pattern of their surprise in most formal occasions, these are understood to be asymmetrical pieces put together as the rationale, the project, the grant seeker must be aggressive for whom, exactly?
If you fall/ I will catch you/I will be waiting . . . is it for the promise of what might be assembled, won, the pieces of the self in constant defense, so clearly, no fun—
This is the thing about an ambush—while Virgil never expects this, but always does—at the same damn time!—his ability to record and to present allows him, even amidst many competing circumstances—found or self-induced—some form of lasting documentation.
Virgil thinks maybe the draw for him and the others is pure stardom, or something, pure drama—whatever the case may be, the effect in his discovery, after sliding the timeline bar back, was that Virgil returned to an unusual place of intimidation by the impending Race Rain.
But there would be no storm, because Virgil refused, partly, and was afraid, partly.
Would this attack somehow hinge against his standing?
Would he absorb the encounter? Would his career?
Virgil does not want to relate to The Others, Flop Tops and Fillers, with a sense of anything other than rage, because for him—in Virgil’s crazy imagination—there’s no record but being a series of advancements.
Outside of the long closed gay bar, Bojangles, there was a dead white boy found in the parking lot, whose black friend left living had platinum blonde style. Another black, BottomFeeder, is pussy up in a room in a bathhouse. And Virgil thinks this is the illuminated space from within which the fictive must continue its assaults.
In the ManHole in an early morning, Virgil moves in for a kiss and his eye is not burnt, because the tip of the cigar, oddly, is cold ash. SLUT or PIG is written in black marker on a white belly, and a cold white man is bolted to a wall. He snorted coke off of Virgil’s cock down there. Virgil escaped to another room, hearing his name yelled in the dungeon—
Virgil! Virgil! Virgil!
It’s too dark to see down where he was, but not dark enough for Virgil to recall the smell of DaddyJoliet’s pipe filling the hallway in Millington.
DaddyJoliet spoke Latin.
In the house, there is no direct access to this story that is fixed across the Meatpacking District, NYC, when only a glance informs Virgil’s need, his need to be right, to be stroked, and to be held, for if not, who knows for what?
This is Virgil’s stance, at least in his first look, a swimming stroke, to move under the water until his body becomes loose and open, stretching forward, in his own lane, preferably.
Pool aside, or chlorine left in the nasal cavity: Here’s the thing—Virgil does not need Wite-Out to move through his imagination, but in reviewing the scene in the privacy of the Red House’s yard’s deck, it seemed like a good idea. Still does.
The recycling can rumbles, and so too, the cup stirs, and the neighbors Avatared the forest that was previously their tree filled yard, and the buzzing drones of lawn gear hum, like the rinsed teacup is rinsed during the session, and the rumble of the dump truck that leaves a pile of dirt in their yard.
In retrospect, Virgil understands what builds as something that he has to follow through the memory of the City with the Metal Sky, sure, but even as he is so far from it in the midst of the containment, it’s still a trap and set-up.
Or maybe they were just kids, then. Virgil will forever be tied to that existence, but despite wishes from Stream, Virgil will seek composition and meditation as formal strategy. This is one way to revisit the scene of embarrassment. The space of recovery is not about addiction for Virgil, it’s about recovering a longer past that has nothing to do with CinchMark,Beard, nor anything to ever do with the white brigade! Fuck the white brigade!
It’s too bad that there was not any real follow-up after the capture. Because Virgil would have played along, but because he has his own thing going on, Virgil leaves for the suburbs, and decides to make what he wants, when he wants. So see-ya! Ballistics!—I gits this, Virgil freestyles.
The animal that wasn’t hit by a car on the road; instead, it was shot in the face with a BB gun. Some of her teeth were shot out. Some of the BBs ended up blowing away parts of the roof of its mouth. And since there were no exit wounds to prove otherwise, it would appear that she swallowed some of the ammo.
What happened? Maybe, would you feel better if we watched it together?
Wite-Out was not ready for the battle, or for Virgil all Hyphy! That’s what happened! Wite-Out makes hand gestures akin to the PodBod in the Porsche, who parks in the yellow zone at the Starbucks in Miller Place, and whisks in with his bad self to uproot whatever he needs to jumpstart his evening. And so does another van, and even in the lot, a mini-CAT tractor winds by!
Look Bitch, the dismissal has to do with the understanding of those in the perceived bottom of the frame as “property” and within the bounds of “development,” the moment where the truth is caught on tape, FineJoke told a tale:
Terror is funny, to some, and it can be realized through a number of formations that are familiar, and one can say something about the state of the art, and art making, but there is a history of terror that affects some of us more than others.
Which means not you! Which means there is a problem, but it’s not yours to interpret, Virgil was not taking notes, so he did not write or say this then, but he does later, notes around the collection of pictured fists semi-closed in numerous shots and cut-outs—Some come up in Virgil’s quick blue pen sketches, to help him see what he wants to say. Some fetal closed. Some bodies are shot because of consequences. A Reach. Some are shot in the summer. Some amplify. Or silence.
There are various formations that could work to illuminate these:
A Little Glowmer decides to play. A Little Glowmer attempts to make a screw act like a top, little girl hands flicking it into its activity. HappyPetSitting Dad ignores her, but also, you see, he pays attention, enough attention to keep the excitement of the Glowmer alive. Is the Glowmer impervious to Race Drops? This is a casual and constant pounding that Virgil wants to block out, but it is against this pounding that he figures his resistance, and his typing, which after all is play, joy, and cartwheels!
Virgil was working on something in that basement. Perhaps working towards the space of what it means to mask. Forever. In goggles and a swim cap. To signify the difference between the swimmer and the germ, this is the story, a story of power and time, and moving around the document, a motion, really, that has found an epicenter, an epicenter in what he felt to be risk, breaking and breaking and breaking.
The possibility in there, Virgil sings:
. . . . I’ve got to run away . . . . Virgil would like to sing along, but what are the ethics in returning to the notes that are in a video hidden away, a video in which one says I am the germ. And my role in this activity is that I am tainted love, and what are the alliances? Language?
Are there security cameras in the Red House that will protect the machines left behind in the morning’s grey light? Is there a burden against which Virgil will feel less, now that he’s free, and holds a card that says his employment is indefinite?
In Ta On Mwah Video, there, too are germs.
These germs are cast in a sketch where power triangulates. The world is often perceived and presented as a stable one, a world of understood pressures, a world of steady beats, a world of synthesizers, a world of regular sounds after all, Wally—Virgil looks into the Race Drop’s pressure and moves inside where it’s cool, and marks.
Virgil realizes that it is most polite to sit as witness. The witness in the dunk tank, the one who runs ahead and pushes the button—no ball will be thrown, and in fact, during practice, there will be a shooting, and the shooting will presuppose any decorum across partisan lines.
A jet will be shot out of the sky, and the sky will darken until there is no leastwise survivor. The safety dance is only for some. War is coming, and so too, is the ejection of the pilot from the cockpit. Safe?
Wite-Out! Listen.
But only Dakota appears white in the 7 Sailors killed in the collision.
Noe, Xavier, Shingo, Carlos, Ngoc, and there’s Gary, who was 37. Maybe. “Adventure on the Destroyer,” “ . . . an immigrant from the Philippines . . . . poor teenager from Guatemala . . . native of Vietnam . . . a fire fighter’s son from a rural crossroads . . . ”
Wite-Out has a friend who is a drunk, who even at a party, later, wanted to engage in a fight, on the street! Between Tenured Faculty! Imagine!
The arrangements of power are often clear, but even GradStudGlowmers feel the impending need to rule.
Thing is, this is not your world Ho, and I am here, Virgil says, to tell you what Ah think!
Virgil is often seen as a machine, prolific, a high producer of product—so much so that he can even joke, when the birds cut the morning against some form of white buzzing or drilling, a snag on a corner, a nub—
Butch might think it’s funny, when Virgil plays a “drug pusher” in the nap and sleep room of the Red House. Virgil has so little patience for many things, but he does see connections between what BlueLivesMatter might be thinking and the ProudBoys, and White Power, too—
Mayo-Consciousness is real, and it’s enacted in Virgil’s own racist imaginary, one where he looks at the two (FetalFatArmeth and KaptainPointeePoo) discussing the future:
. . . a hold onto the suburban Atlanta district…
C’mon man, you want to get high? You won’t feel a thing.
Virgil needs stability, so it’s stability that he will create.
FineJoke once invited Virgil to a performance before the one in the basement in The City with the Metal Sky, and even neutrally, Virgil realizes that it was better than the one he got caught up in. That performance was at a museum in NYC. In it, Virgil revealed a world of his neighbor’s dead cat that TheStoryTells turned into a movie!
It exists!
There is no story to be unveiled in Virgil’s recounting of the events in the museum—not here—other than to say, he learned about voice.
It’s not a persona, it’s the fear that he will be seen for what he is, a floater.
He doesn’t care what others think, which makes Virgil a very active reader of circumstance and perspective, but the threat of his being perceived as a floater is maybe like being called lazy, so this is why he works constantly.
But did Virgil think with Tenure would also come release?
Did Virgil find a way back into the heart of his most never to be fired self?
Virgil looks into the grass where he tried to dance, but felt that his body was so fat. For The Treatise, Virgil’s mask is yet to be bought. Collage-Knowledge, is this a thing? So. Why fiction? This is a question that Virgil wants to answer, but being a floater means that he is taken in multiple directions, but he’s not distracted.
Look, Reading is Fundamental, we all know this, thinks Virgil. But Reading is a matter of choice, abortion counts, and so does porno, and breeding, and the collapse of sense into form, say of the confession to reveal the measured girth of the first object in, a bottle opens the ass, then a fist, then the real raw contact, Virgil hedges—
Virgil attempts to describe this to Stream, an example in the case of only his being semi-warmed to Moonlight.
It seems that, for Virgil, the movie moves in multiple ways, but he realized that it is not what is being presented as its public account, given the color composition of the film, the blues, the blacks—this isn’t new, but this isn’t the point.
Black culture travels, TheBlackUmbrella reminds.
“Under the sign of fiction” is a phrase that one of TheOracles[TB] taught Virgil, so in this formation, he feels more or less enabled.
Boxes, and lockers—
In one still, Virgil and FineJoke and TheNewLing are on one side of the group.
Virgil, the coolest of them all, is going mmmmmm. A lot.
AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, sez Fonzie, thumb up, and sways.
Virgil is afraid to see his own anger and to consider what he says, on tape,
but will over time, alone.
Right now, he simply has to understand a way back in. It’s like how he gets into the swim. Virgil is after a line of feeling he only achieves near the last fourth of his session, at the forty-five minute mark, out of his body.
FineJoke looks serene in the corner, staring into an inner, and TheNewLing is painting a black cup white, or spitting out white milk on the floor. Virgil is hungry too, not for stardom, but an answer, and he fears, for some reason, to sweat Wite-Out.
Wite-Out is elevated, moving above the audience,
hovering as if a drone
on the art scene.
In every case, the body is marked and, too, it is resilient against, or:
Down
Down
Boogie on Down
On Down
Of course, it makes sense, to be compelling is to be an obstacle. And of course, there is a radical difference between the synthesized existence and the bass line, but Virgil, who is not a musician, is unaware of the differences between the two when he’s pressured.
But in his “freestyle and collage” analysis, he realizes that there are clear similarities between The OrangeBLOWHOLE and Wite-Out.
Their brilliance circulates in their ability to vanish into a collective, of memory, and over time, fading into positions of what we all know, type.
But Virgil is a Master. Virgil understands the role of performance, and the heat in the humid mist also knows, and understands.
Birds warble into the late morning, an indefatigable heart: What matters?
“The kitschy thing,” Wite-Out says in the anger, or at the gang jump-in, in the battle, something that time has, in fact, healed.
“It’s Kitsch by perspective.”—this is what TheNewLing says, and when one is hurt, one turns away.
In one still in the hidden video, there is an arm, and the arm is folded up at the end into a hand. Virgil moves back into the document. Sees it. Virgil decides he can draw from parts of it, if even fragments, becoming both point and aggressor, figure: Suck on my machine gun.
The Joke is always a rupture. The joke is a wound. I want to get into language, Virgil thought about all the times he was yelled at—
Rolled eyes. Smell. His mother’s language—
We have that here.
