odysseus of the intestines

Sitting on the toilet, all he remembers of his fitful night are the dice he downed like a pair of aspirin with a tumbler of tap-water before bed. He muses that he is rolling those dice, not with the pathetic exile of is hand, but with his entire body, his most central self, the core of his being. And although they most probably would not be cast this morning, it would be only a matter of hours before they would land in the ultimate hand of the sea, and there roll for a time far beyond his own.

I sit on the toilet. As my buttocks gradually relax and part company, the hemispheres of my brain, too, seem to relax, part, to let pass the concentration required of me by the book resting open (parted, if you please) on my knees. At such times my comprehension of the most abstract concepts seem directly proportionate to the fecal matter released from my fundament. Unfortunately, it would be virtually impossible to devise a scientific experiment to prove this correlation; it is difficult enough to measure intellectual comprehension quantitatively, much less weigh it by the pound!
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I do a good deal of my serious reading while sitting on the toilet. I've been doing this ever since I can remember, though there was a phase during my early teenage years when I would spend considerable time in the bathroom masturbating, using my reputation therein as a pretext.
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My earliest memory on the subject of my bathroom reading: I, age seven, reading from my elementary-school issue American history textbook, which weighed heavily on my knees . . . my feet, still a few inches from reaching the black and white tiled floor, dangling, sunk like angel's feet in the unbuckled cloud of my dropped trousers.

Humanity as revealed by its invention of virtual pets: I know a father who, awakened one night by the incessant beeping of one of these creatures, had to rise, and through a series of button-pushing, appease this miniature mechanical beast by disposing of its two steaming digital turds into a virtual toilet.

Profound resemblance between TV's "canned laughter" and the sound of a toilet's flushing.

It is glorious to spend an entire day sleeping and eating and pissing and shitting and masturbating in varying order throughout.

Breakfast: granola with sliced banana and milk, water, orange juice, coffee lightly creamed.
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Lunch: peas lightly buttered, water, orange juice.
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Dinner: camembert or brie and crackers, perhaps salted cucumber, water, red wine.

Un Petit dejeuner du cafe au lait et un croissant ou baguatte avec beurre. Parfait.

Favorite wine: Cotes du Rhone.

I lather the soap in my hands; with it, caress my chest hair, belly; then, with bar in right hand, lather pubis; with soapy left, scrotum and penis; with right, run bar up and down cleft of ass; cheeks of; left leg, foot; right leg, foot; with bar in right hand, left arm pit; switch bar to left, right arm pit; left arm; right; once again, lather soap in hands, place bar in dish; wash face.

A Fortune Teller who combines and applies the arts of tea leaf reading and the reading of animal entrails to the chamber pot.

An outline of the evolution of my education/ intellectual curiosity: My studies began with the sciences; I wanted to find out why things are the way they are. I've peeled the faces off of cats, cut the tiniest windows in eggshells so as to watch the hearts of embryonic chicks beat until they stop, and seen the human brain handled like a football by some of my former fellow classmates. (Incidentally, it was in the laboratory where I was first struck by the resemblance between the shape of the human brain and the human buttocks-- minus the convolutions, of course.) I began studying psychology, philosophy, the arts, humanities and social sciences to satisfy a curiosity that couldn't be satisfied by the scientific method. The professors I admired most were the art historians, those impressive polymaths. Finally, I began writing, simply to make up those answers to my most elusive questions.

My reflections, dreams, the imaginary conversations I've had with others, so many of which will never be known by anyone else. . . . It is the same with everyone; this ephemerally existing stew bubbling inside the pressure cooker of our heads (And O how we wish it was thick and hearty enough to support an upright spoon!), while all that others see is but the pinhole stream of steam.
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Beneath the skull of events, of visible life, the skull we see rock and rustle, another skull, formed by the mind's secretions, the accretion of ideas, the calcification of pages.
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Most ironic, I think, is that our brains-- the single organ separating us from even the most elevated primate-- vulnerable as the soft and slimy bodies of snails (and oftentimes as slow), are themselves protected by the primitive, brutally bony globes similarly employed by such simple creatures as mollusks.
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The only thing we have going for ourselves are our brains. Humans are comical because we are so ill-at-ease in the natural world which, genetically, has so ill-equipped us physically; lacking quills, claws, wings, fur, we humans are the ones who, invited by our slyly malicious host to an informal pool party, arrive appropriately attired, only to discover that we have been deliberately misled into a tuxedo-and-gown-filled ball.
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Before I came to the conclusion that the scientific method was not tailored to suit my lanky curiosity, I had the opportunity, in an anatomy and physiology laboratory, to fondle, first hand, the human brain. After I had escaped losing myself in its convolutions, I leaned back to observe the brain in its physical totality; it was then I discovered the striking anatomical resemblance between the hemispheres of the human brain and the human buttocks.
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Perhaps because of that perception I consider that better than belief is to dwell and thrill in the possibility of everything-- even nothing! A nomadic existence against-- and sometimes with-- a wind full of marvels of the human mind, the human imagination! A sincere but temporary belief leading to the fullest comprehension of the gorgeous idea presently occupying the mind.
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Is this mere skepticism? No. Did not Diderot convince D'Alembert-- at least for a night, at least fictionally-- that "our real opinion is not the one from which we have never wavered, but the one to which we have most regularly returned"?
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The new man will grow strong and fit on the well-balanced diet of the Buridan's ass that has finally eaten from one haystack, then works up a healthy appetite walking to the other, for more, ad infinitum.
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O ass!
O buttock-shaped hemispheres of the human brain,
Perpetually shifting in your seat!

To always live by this refrain:
Those buttock-shaped hemispheres of the human brain!