I feel like writing, but I don't know what or why I would even want to. So I'm not going to write. These are not words. This is not being said and so you might as well not listen. What else is there to do though? Whatever our mixed intentions I think that stories are just as likely to be told as not anyway and there is no ending them once they get started. So, if you'll allow me to begin, although of course I already have without bothering to wait for your instructions, in case you never gave them you see, I am going to begin or continue the telling of a dreary, tedious tale: that of my life, as well as that of these few flies here you see hovering around my corpse. They are my friends. You may recognize them, one of them is you, I almost forgot to mention that, time has not deformed them so much that you should fail but I need to take into account your illness, in this as in everything else, except for when I need to deceive you or when I am also in a state of relative unawareness, but we can go into that later. Enough of your babbling, we are getting far enough behind ourselves as it is. Now, let's see. Chapter One. But should there be chapters, and if so do they need to be numbered, and if so in what order? It would probably be enough to just write Chapter each time, or just once at the beginning, so that people get the general idea that the work is divided into parts, although I am not sure that it is as I haven't written it yet, and I don't think I will be much in the mood for it later on if it doesn't turn out that way. Now that I have wasted nearly half a paragraph on the issue I am not sure it requires further consideration. Enough that the issue has been exposed, along with my ignorance, and if any of us wants chapters they can manage it for themselves afterwards. I think I warned you about the tediousness.

So. I will begin with the elf. The fact that there was an elf. No, that's not it. I mean there was an elf, but there are other things in this historical scene that I could point out before that. Far easier if I could just say it all at once, about the bricks and the weeds and the hummingbirds and the hot wind, or not at all, in fact I will just stick to the elf for now before your head explodes with the possibilities. Later we will get to me and you and the other degenerates. The elf was standing. He had not always done so. He had at various times and for various lengths of time been horizontal, vertical, bent at an acute angle, and upside-down, as well as posed in other positions without official nomenclature due to their subtlety, or because they were not filthy enough to deserve mention in good society. He had an assortment of appendages that were more or less permanently attached to his body, and I would hazard that he had become familiar with most of their uses more through accident and guesses than applied theory, assuming the deplorable state they were in had not been permanently fixed since birth. Yes, I suppose he was born, it is not a pleasant thought. I will not stoop to saying that he was made which would imply some degree of craft. Rather that he was sloughed or dredged. Eviscerated is a bit much. Did he have a name? Not every phenomenon has a name, as I have already pointed out, in particular those things which are most ambiguous and ephemeral. He was definitely ambiguous, but I don't know for ephemeral. And if he had a name it may not have applied to all the parts he identified as his own or that were habitually affixed to his being, such as for instance his trousers; and then he may have had other, secret names, known only to a few others or kept entirely to himself, as well as such names as people gave him when they thought (correctly) that he wasn't listening. However it will be more convenient to call him something rather than nothing or multiple things, so we will have a means of conveying his deportment with the minimal amount of confusion, which is getting out of hand as it is, so I will call him West. It is the only direction he can conceive of - all the others, including left and right, up and down, forwards and backwards, are conspicuously absent from his head. In all other respects his mind is perfect, a striking example of the form. It has numbers, colors, syntax, categories of food and drink, knowledge in respect to the operation of simple and complex machinery, knowledge in respect to various orifices, memories of places he has visited and opinions on places he has not, basic arithmetic, the approximate prices of goods and services essential to his existence, but no directions! Not except for West. I cannot remember now if that is his actual name or if that is the reason I started calling him by it. So what if either, the invention is done with, I need to get on with him.

I think I said he was an elf. His parents are not elves, he does not have pointed ears. If you consider him in relation to trees the result is not very interesting, not that it ever is in any case. But I had to say he was something and nothing else came to mind, save for obscenities, but those appeared for other purposes and were put to use in other areas, or arose pure and simply without effort, that is poetry for you. Also I conveyed that he was standing, but in retrospect I believe he was sitting. He may have been waiting, or he may have been deeply engaged in the more immediate cause of sitting. No, come to think of it, he was all caught up with eating some kind of onion, and not paying attention to what was coming or what was beneath him, since how could he have? Neither would have made any definite impression on him, although I guess he could have accomplished both unconsciously, even if his relations with the onion were extremely distracting. What a mess I'm making of this. With any luck it will be dealt with by the benevolent censors, may G-d save them from anything they might find unworthy to wipe their asses with.

You've had enough, I can tell, of these fine sentiments and this exciting debate about what is and what wasn't. No more, then. No more for now.