Piercing Odors and Clouds

odor on the western express
i don't often take the bus, but i decided to take it this past tuesday because ashoka was playing a 3-song audition gig for "bodog battle of the bands" at the elbo room, and he was already there with his green machine--a lime green '76 bmw he got from otto. i took the bus, so we could ride home together and talk. it was nearly dusk when i boarded the western avenue express, heading northbound. i put my two dollars in the slot and turned to find a seat. immediately to my left, covering the three priority seats, was a blue tarp with a large hump underneath it, sitting somewhat upright. the tarp was spilling into the aisle, and i was forced to step on it, as i made my way to an open seat. i had no idea whose misery it concealed; there was not a hand or the top of a head to give me a clue. but whoever it was found the spot comfortable enough to snore. i sat only two seats behind the mound, and i had to turn my head to the side several times, in hopes that i would avoid the direct hit of odor emanating from it. i felt not only that i was smelling him, but something far more pervasive than that. an odor is a chemical dissolved in the air, at a very low concentration. chemicals are made up of molecules, and molecules, in turn, are the smallest properties of a compound. a compound is a substance made up of two or more elements, and an element is a substance that cannot be decomposed to a simpler substance. and since elements are made up of atoms, which are the smallest particles of matter, i was quite literally chewing and swallowing this man along with my gum. a stowaway in my saliva, surreptitiously traveling down my esophagus. i was breathing him too, and he was swooshing about the cilia in my lungs, like particles in an ocean moving over a surface of sea anemones. so where did he end, and i begin?
a piercing experience
helmholtz watson, in brave new world, is an alpha-plus lecturer in writing at the college of emotional engineering. he wants to teach his students how to write words that are "piercing". but in the brave new world, superficiality and frivolity are the modi operandi and depth of thought is misunderstood, frowned upon, an occasion to pop some soma. last night, after i re-pierced my nose, i thought about helmholtz. when i started working in cubicle land, i felt the need to take out my nose ring. no one told me to, but i felt it was the corporate sacrifice i had to make. i had been without a nose ring for almost a year, and then yesterday as i was riding home with meg, my carpool mate, i got to thinking about re-piercing it. it became my mission for the evening, and after three hours of sitting in the sink with my fingers up my nose, and a nose ring half way in it, with one dinner break, i succeeded in piercing through the cartilage. i really felt that i had accomplished something great, as if this act was symbolic of me, coming back to myself. i was triumphant. helmholtz is searching for something beyond the superficial assignments he gives his students. he knows there is something more than this. here's an excerpt from chapter 4 of brave new world:

Helmholtz shook his head. "Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it–only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing … Or else something else to write about …" He was silent; then, "You see," he went on at last, "I'm pretty good at inventing phrases–you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopædically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too."
"But your things are good, Helmholtz."
"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. "But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students–how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing–you know, like the very hardest X-rays–when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try …"

i have done the literal piercing, and now i want to pierce with words, just like helmholtz is beginning to figure out in this passage. but i'll do it with no grand plans and no great expectations. the time is now.
morning clouds
so many strato-cumuli on this sunny and crisp day. just like this: