the apparatus.

i woke up in an apartment with four white walls & a red door. there was a lightbulb and a refrigerator. one electrical outlet on the wall, which i plugged into and hummed in harmony with the fridge to while away the night. i discovered alcohol and bent my head into many bottles. the walls were stained in weird places. i had four boxes with my belongings, which i had labelled EAST, WEST, NORTH and SOUTH. in the NORTH, i had my meagre library. in the WEST, i had my clothing. in the EAST, records and notebooks. in the SOUTH - miscellaneous, odds and ends. screwdrivers.

i stayed there for many years, blinking in the blue light of the neon from the restaurant i lived above. it sizzled & hummed, a bug-zapper determined to lure airplane-sized insects. cars on the street. a bare mattress. a typewriter, which i never used.

time passed, and the books i had disappeared through the influence of ghosts. i never noticed until i was searching for it. a mild sense of disappointment settled on me, grew on me like moss. idleness became a trenchant disease, solitude an unbearable prison. as we age, us shadows start to thin, and we need to seek out others of our kind so as to be reassured.

i constructed an apparatus of language in an attempt to contact, to seek out, those others of my kind. first, the schematic for such an endeavour took years. i am only now half-way through the plans of it. by the time i am old and paper-thin, i will have put the final attachment on the machine. my one wish is to be able to press "CALL" before i expire.