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the archive(s):
issue no. 5:
(no title yet) i / Ilya Zaychik
I.
Too many resolutions, I've decided. Fuck resolutions. I have made so many, every day, almost. I examine experiences, draw conclusions and say 'ok. Now you are going to move here. That was bad, back there. Take a right. No, not Marie-Anne. You walked here yesterday. Now take Rachel to the statue. Up there, up ahead, all the qualities you lack. Past the drug pushers, the cross-country skiers, the hikers, the dorm-dwellers. Keep going, until you can see the city the beneath you. Go.' No. This never works‹and immediately after I have stood, arms on hips, hair flapping in the wind, atop this mountain in front of an equally flapping flag that reads, 'New Me Now', I understand the foolishness and implausibility of such an approach, and tumble, willingly, to Rue Square One, where all my mental possessions lie strewn about me, disorganized. The mountain begins to fade, the city now encroaching, all too large. So I squint, put on my glasses, because I want it to be that easy. I want to know what to change about myself and be able to do it. But I can no longer climb without looking down, and across‹to the mountain range I have scaled to get here, each peak as perfect as the last. The street's nice late at night, cold, quiet, flat‹I can see down Rachel all the way to the park, not a single car, just a row of streetlight glow, catching in the asphalt gleam of the wide boulevard. But I can't help myself. I gather my gear and begin the journey afresh, leaving a little pebble to remember the last place I fell when I inevitably return. I have amassed quite a rock collection.
We continue fighting, moving, resolving crises, numbed by our motions all the while, using two-sided language, constantly shattering like $1 wine glasses then wrapping ourselves in cellophane, still trying to pass as glasses. Maybe this is it then: the broken-glass-limp, the dull, painful knowledge that the many coffee-black things we cherish are diluted with cream while we watch, helpless, as the diffusion of the contradiction sparing no molecules of liquid with its carnivorous tentacles, first plummeting down then seeping up and all around until we have neither coffee nor cream. Maybe this amorphous beige compound is where it ends. But I am not sure. I take my coffee to go.
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