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Blank | Sep 28 2004

I’ve been trying to think of a word. It’s not mutilate but a word like mutilate. It means to alter something permanently, and in a negative sense. It’s what I’ve done to my fingernails. I’ve blanked them. Blank is the word. I was explaining this to someone and couldn’t think of the word. Then I let it go because after a certain point there’s no use trying.

I like trying, though. I like the tension of it, or I like the feeling when the word bursts through the tension. Except it doesn’t burst through, really. It just appears. It’s like when the screen goes black and you see the title in plain white letters.

I know the word is inside me. That’s what interesting. I know it’s there, hidden, or perhaps obscured, and I have to find it. I try different approaches. It’s a lot like writing, or any creative act. I feel like I’m in an enormous house with a long hall and I’m randomly opening doors.

Actually it’s a trance state. I just tried it. I think without thinking. It’s like looking without looking. My eyes are open but I’m not seeing anything, I’m not focusing. It’s like I’m floating, or lying still while everything floats around me.

It’s not really like this, but I see myself in a subway car, in a tunnel, as another train pulls up alongside. Looking at that train, it appears that only the faster train is moving, and very slowly. One train drifts ahead, then the other, and yet both appear to be floating in something which is itself moving and not moving. Also, the other train isn’t a train so much as a series of boxes filled with light. People sit in the boxes. Everyone is hurtling forward, and yet they seem so still and floating—oblivious, really, and silent.

I just remembered the word. It’s disfigure.