She Walked In, Ordered, Sat Down a While, and Left1 Kyle Francis Williams —What’ll it be? —Just coffee. —Drip? —Yes. —Milk and sugar? —One sugar. —You got it. Placement knock carousal round porcelain grained to solid surface faux marble. White ceramic reflecting white fluorescent lines ignorant of material edge carrying over to white-veined countertop. White: perception of the presence of every wavelength of visible light; black: perception of the absence of every visible wavelength. Reflection presents white; absorption presents black; black then is the extreme presence of every color presented as its absence; white follows. Everything is everything else if the changing of contextual terms is abated. Whether white or black is absorbed depends upon the material of the object in question and environmental factors—all falls to subjective perception of objective immaterial. Of: Ebony and ivory encased in black mahogany wood hiding other-colors in conte(n/x)t, none worth mention; tuxedo black suit (alternatively: absorbed presence inducing absence); greased black hair slicked to shine white (alt: absence reflecting presence); waxed black facial hair to swirl (alt: etc). Actions absented: opening of perceptory orbs. Actions presented: bow, seat, song; pour, scald, drown. Immaterial sound tuned to key and scale, last note droned to drowning then—. Immaterial every color presence veins and cracks presentiment every color porcelain presentiment every color striate presentiment crowd presented pianist; latter then drowned by absence of color, former then filled by absence of color. Heave of chest, seize of physical body, human noises to inhuman absence of sound felt as weight. Death; Corpse: soaked in absencesoaked absence perceived as an absence of another kind (human duality has drowned; we have drowned it) so becoming nothing at all. Floating absence in sea of absence, absorption of color and animate. —That’ll be four thirty-five. —Yes. Here. —Your change’ll be sixty-five cents. —Appreciated. —Enjoy your coffee. —You too.
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A pedestalled moment, defined as immaterial section of time that changes length in accordance with convenience, thematic concerns, framing. A moment of attempted ignorance of social norms. A moment, lasting no longer than a moment. Heated gaseous presence of every color floating from heated liquid absence of every color: one births the other and vice versa, ever existing only in dichotomy, defined by separation. If X is only ever defined relative to Y, do either exist without the other, and why? Ponder a question to get through the moment. The moment is all. The absence of presence is the presence of absence making whole the landscape outside translucent panes. Translucence: the absence of reflective/absorptive substance—if extended over the edges of a frame, effectively the absence of any viewable substance, as seen in Stanley Kubrick’s floating pen in 2001 or [other example] or [other example]. (The best arguments come with three examples, don’t ask why.) There, still, a corpse floating in coffee, past the moment. A longer frame may be necessary. Opening—translucent panes viewing the void aside frame, held within opaque frames painted absence standing without regard to context—open. Presentiment child: small(er) active presence, later stripling—if a moment is a container of time and time is assumed in flux does order then matter in which inner-moments are presented (probably). Dressed monolith in black coattails, holding stems of green leading up blooms of purple (stems of envy leading up blooms of royalty?). Presentiment of an event in failure; ensue drama. Monolith knocking its wade across vinyl flooring made up of every color: (wear/ where) opaque (every/no)thing. —Excuse me, have you seen my father? Absence defined as absence (life, definition TBD), floating in absence defined as absence (cold, solidity, color, etc.), held within presence (color) defined by ability of presentiment, held up by presence (color) defined by etc. etc. Linguists in part define language for its ability to express recursion; other things can also be defined in this way (life, time, humans) with varying degrees of (e/a)ffectiveness. Still: carr(i/y)on. —He had a performance tonight; have you seen him?
