Eyeheart Everything by Kevin Sampsell, Mykle Hansen, Ed Stastny, Kevin Kirkbride Read Free Book Online Page B

potatoes for fourteen minutes or until they become softer than a soft apple but not quite as soft as a hard pear, then chop them in whatever manner you prefer — I’m not picky — before home-frying them on a PH-neutral cooking surface oiled with walnut oil and heated to 260 degrees Celsius. When they are done home-frying, season them and rush them hither.
    Toast is futile. It would take too long to describe what I really want, and I’m getting hungry, so let’s just forget about the toast. Just bring me 300 milliliters of boiling water, thirty grams of raw coffee beans, a Bunsen burner, a piece of silk, a machete and six inches of string while I’m waiting. And a cloth napkin, please. Thank you.

Poor Ivan Is In Love

    Our poor friend Ivan has fallen in most unfortunate and inadvisable love — with a girl, no less. We saw him today, beside the Bottle-Cap Factory that graces our industrial skyline. We wore the tweed coat and chambray trousers that are the unofficial uniform of our Group. But Ivan, he arrived draped in a long white clinical jacket, toying with a dilapidated stethoscope as if unsure of its function.
    “She’s interested in Medicine,” he confessed, and blew his nose on a crumpled paper shoe of the hospital variety. “I’ve been reading on the subject myself, just browsing really, but it astounds me what can be accomplished in our age with ... you know, sick people.”
    “Ivan,” we chided in our firm but affectionate tone, “we are meeting tomorrow at the Library to analyze One Hundred Years of Solitude. May one presume one’s attendance?”
    Ivan weighed the brass and rubber stethoscope in his left hand, the tissue shoe in his right, perhaps deciding which would make the more impressive bouquet. Inside the factory, able and responsible bottle-capiers hammered and twisted at their work.
    Poor Ivan!

    Poor, foolish Ivan. We saw him again today, outside the gates that encircle the manicured grounds of the Advertising Building, button on the epaulet of out industrial skyline. We wore the deep blue necktie that is the secret identifier of the members of our Group. But Ivan, deluded boy (clever though he may be in the nobler disciplines), wore a paint-spattered T-shirt and comfortable jeans. He quite reeked of turpentine, and his hands and arms were streaked in orange and cobalt.
    “She’s fond of art,” he apologized.
    “Multifaceted, your Juliet.”
    “I must apologize that I missed last night’s discussion. I’m afraid I was absorbed in my experiments with texture. At any rate, how did it go?”
    “Go? Where would it have gone? Did you expect me to talk to myself for two hours? In the Library?”
    He examined his shoe. “Sorry,” he sighed.
    “And your intaglio,” we probed, “how did it ‘go’?”
    “Quite smoothly, I’m afraid.” He paused, clearly dejected. “But concurrently, I’m finding the process itself, the experience of the failure to paint, it’s enticing. I’ve already failed several portraits, though when faced with certain beauty, the oil and brush simply ... reaffirm a certain ... exquisite ...” At this his eyes achieved an abstract-expressionistic quality. We took notice of a number, possibly a telephone number, smeared on the length on his left arm.
    “Well,” we commented, “the visual arts certainly have their place in our industrial skyline, when executed by the visualists themselves. But please, Ivan, members of our Group are scheduled to meet tomorrow morning at the University to recruit new members. Without you we should be deluged.”
    Ivan knelt and studied the texture of the sidewalk with semi-professional interest. Inside the great gray Advertising Building, persuasive new arguments bubbled in their flasks, awaiting mass release.
    “I’ll be there, of course,” he said, and started away.
    “And Ivan?”
    “Hm?”
    “Tomorrow evening at the Library, the membership will discuss Paradise Lost.”

    We met that morning at the wide steps of the