your voice when you affect childishness, your voice when you affect cool, your filler sounds from half a world away and a language you still can't quite speak, your absolute detachment! from your own courteous words whenever they creep in--
would you be more or less polite, if you knew? me?
if i could have said, listen, i am probably the most well-educated person you know, and i knew my way around a text well before that. i mostly deal with material reality, probabilities, averages. i don't speak your language, but i'm translating as we go, and i have that perpetually undone look you like when you see it in the movies
i know it's not a me problem, but still it stings; having girded my loins, as it were, for a completely different type of weapon, to be confronted by what? words?
alfred skilton: ruiner of appetites, ladies and gentlemen!
