1 00:00:05,200 --> 00:00:08,519 Speaker 1: Hollo. I molkned stories all the time. Glad you are here, 2 00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:11,839 Let's get into it. I came to with sugar on 3 00:00:11,839 --> 00:00:13,960 my lips, in a fog so cold it felt like memory. 4 00:00:14,519 --> 00:00:16,800 The air was lacquered in tea and sand. Light thined 5 00:00:16,839 --> 00:00:20,039 into film. Grain, taste and color arranged themselves into something 6 00:00:20,120 --> 00:00:22,000 like a map. I had once followed, and then mislaid. 7 00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:24,359 I had a ticket stub folded into the palm of 8 00:00:24,399 --> 00:00:26,559 my coat, the paper's fibers softened by a thumb I 9 00:00:26,559 --> 00:00:29,480 did not remember using. For a long, dizzy breath, I 10 00:00:29,519 --> 00:00:31,600 listened for a heartbeat that belonged to a world outside 11 00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:33,840 that miston found only the distant, metallic song of a 12 00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:37,000 wheel turning. Somewhere beyond the haze, A cotton candy cut 13 00:00:37,039 --> 00:00:38,880 sat where a dozen other cuts might have been, all 14 00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:41,600 of them swallowed by that harsh It belonged to me 15 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:43,960 and did not. The first thing the cut did was 16 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,119 offer itself, like an apology. A single bolt burned above it, 17 00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:49,759 hallowed in fog, and the vendors shadow fell across jaws 18 00:00:49,799 --> 00:00:53,159 that glinted like trapman's. Each jar held something different, a 19 00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:55,799 sliver of laughter, perhaps by the smell of a kitchen 20 00:00:55,799 --> 00:00:57,640 that no longer existed, and they caught the light and 21 00:00:57,719 --> 00:01:01,039 multiplied it into thin, private constellations. My hand went to 22 00:01:01,079 --> 00:01:03,759 the ticket without asking. The stubb was warm and smelled 23 00:01:03,759 --> 00:01:06,280 faintly of sponge, sugar, and something metallic beneath it, an 24 00:01:06,319 --> 00:01:08,680 eye and tang I could not place. I rubbed the 25 00:01:08,719 --> 00:01:11,000 stub between thumb and finger in emotion I had practiced 26 00:01:11,040 --> 00:01:13,280 for years, the small lettergy to convince me I knew 27 00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:16,280 the route, even when the streets re arranged themselves. There 28 00:01:16,319 --> 00:01:18,799 was an urge in a resistible motion that pulled me forward, 29 00:01:18,879 --> 00:01:22,000 like tides brin cliffs to themselves. The bulb hummed with 30 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:23,879 the low drone that seemed to make the fog vibrate, 31 00:01:23,959 --> 00:01:25,599 and the vendor tilted his head in a way that 32 00:01:25,640 --> 00:01:28,599 mixed patients with calculation. He wore painted along the jaw 33 00:01:28,719 --> 00:01:31,040 like a smile that would not stop. His coat was 34 00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:35,359 a faded pageant teal cyan trimes, acid pink smears, theatrical 35 00:01:35,359 --> 00:01:37,439 read the kind of color that looked better from a distance. 36 00:01:38,120 --> 00:01:40,519 He moved with the slow economy of someone accustomed to small, 37 00:01:40,599 --> 00:01:44,239 deliberate presentations. He proffered a toft of sponge sugar as 38 00:01:44,239 --> 00:01:46,879 if offering a lit candle to a muff. I reached 39 00:01:46,959 --> 00:01:49,159 up before I could wait whither I wanted to. The 40 00:01:49,200 --> 00:01:51,319 sugar was warm when it touched my finger tips, as 41 00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:54,000 for its compressing sweet into the space between thumb and forefinger. 42 00:01:54,599 --> 00:01:58,239 The first strand a pinch tasted like childhood waxwooden falls, 43 00:01:58,239 --> 00:01:59,879 and a sun that lay heavy on an old porch 44 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,680 I could no longer find on any map. It melted 45 00:02:02,680 --> 00:02:04,400 into an image I could not yet name, an outline 46 00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:07,000 of something small and precise, folding itself into a shape 47 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:10,960 that tightened my throat. The vendor watched, He did not speak, 48 00:02:11,639 --> 00:02:14,080 He did not have to. The first taste opened a 49 00:02:14,120 --> 00:02:16,800 door that had been fitted to measure my avoidance. The 50 00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:19,560 spongehow got dissolved into memory like salt, into a wound. 51 00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:22,759 Not a full room, not a full voice, just a small, 52 00:02:22,840 --> 00:02:26,080 particular gesture, a child's hand, a scrape of tiny shoes 53 00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:28,360 on a threshold, some light striking a freckled cheek, and 54 00:02:28,400 --> 00:02:30,680 making the dust in the air look like a private snowfull. 55 00:02:31,240 --> 00:02:34,240 The image sharpent and then blurred, always a fragment, always 56 00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:36,800 with edges. I kept trying to soften. I chewed as 57 00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:39,199 if shoe might make the edge less. Cutting the motion 58 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,800 only slews more detail into place. The vendor tilted his head, 59 00:02:42,840 --> 00:02:45,639 and the clock in his pocket ticked too slowly. Later, 60 00:02:45,759 --> 00:02:48,680 soft oscillating came and went like a tide. It was 61 00:02:48,719 --> 00:02:51,120 not long before the cutten ferdge yielded more than texture 62 00:02:51,719 --> 00:02:54,439 from the sugar. Something could dance smaller than me, smaller 63 00:02:54,439 --> 00:02:56,879 than the life I had thought mine. The echo child 64 00:02:56,919 --> 00:02:58,879 to mavel from the spun fibers, as if pulled from 65 00:02:58,879 --> 00:03:01,960 the center of a spool, ale and precise distowed with 66 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:04,520 a weightless gravity near the tarnished sugar bowl, a half 67 00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:07,199 melted lollopop clutched in one fist, hair cut blunt, and 68 00:03:07,199 --> 00:03:09,400 an even across a brow that somehow remembered tenderness I 69 00:03:09,439 --> 00:03:12,120 felt unworthy of. Their eyes were wide and liquid, a 70 00:03:12,159 --> 00:03:14,319 pale blue rimpink, and their face was a face that 71 00:03:14,439 --> 00:03:17,159 name would he refused to name for yourself, for presence 72 00:03:17,159 --> 00:03:18,840 of the echoed child was not a trick of light. 73 00:03:19,439 --> 00:03:21,479 It had the awkward geometry of a child learning how 74 00:03:21,479 --> 00:03:24,199 to stand on an adult's sower. It did not speak, 75 00:03:24,240 --> 00:03:26,080 but it did something worse. It watch for the patience 76 00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:29,599 that felt like accusation. The cart's bulbs reflected off those eyes. 77 00:03:30,319 --> 00:03:32,719 Every time I touched another throat of sugar to my tarm, 78 00:03:32,879 --> 00:03:35,000 another sharpened image flashed at the edge of my vision. 79 00:03:35,479 --> 00:03:37,479 A pocket too shallow to hide keys, a bow of 80 00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:39,439 a ribbon nottage, or so the faint stained, the color 81 00:03:39,479 --> 00:03:41,639 of old rust at the hem of a coat. The 82 00:03:41,719 --> 00:03:44,039 vendors jars rattled in a sound like a thousand small 83 00:03:44,159 --> 00:03:47,319 private facts being said on the counter. Each muffer pulled 84 00:03:47,319 --> 00:03:49,240 me deeper into a sequence that moved like a thumbstrip 85 00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:53,039 being developed by hand, click, turn, wear, weight, watch, a 86 00:03:53,080 --> 00:03:55,879 hand closing, a child's muffled protest that my body recognized 87 00:03:55,919 --> 00:03:58,639 as something I had muffled before. A fan voice. The 88 00:03:58,639 --> 00:04:01,280 sugar sweetness curdled into some thing eye untinged and thick. 89 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,439 My stomach rolled as the memories poured out, stick imprecise, 90 00:04:04,479 --> 00:04:06,800 forming tablelocs that belond in family albums I had never 91 00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:09,560 allowed myself to open. The more I tasted, the more 92 00:04:09,639 --> 00:04:11,680 the carnivals stopped being a place and started being a 93 00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:14,560 mirror whose hinge was the vender. I tried denial, like 94 00:04:14,599 --> 00:04:17,160 a coat to shrug off the coal. I blinked hope 95 00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,279 in the face would dissipate into fog. But fog only 96 00:04:19,279 --> 00:04:23,600 rearranges itself. It does not forget. The echo child stepped 97 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:27,079 closer whenever my mind staged. Rehearsals are forgetting. The small, 98 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:29,639 deliberate reach that asked for acknowledgment, not with sound, but 99 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:32,639 with insistence, set my teeth on edge. At times, the 100 00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:35,240 sugar showed me small evidence that anchored memory and indigo. 101 00:04:35,319 --> 00:04:38,519 Ribbon noted just so, a scarabney I had dressed and clean, 102 00:04:38,600 --> 00:04:40,959 but now saw as a greedy map of time, A 103 00:04:40,959 --> 00:04:43,160 scrape thumb and away. The light had caught a tear 104 00:04:43,160 --> 00:04:45,800 I had wiped away too quickly. Once the cotton yielded 105 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:49,040 the glint of metal, my mother's small silver locket swallowed 106 00:04:49,040 --> 00:04:51,360 and then repurposed within the threads. Its face blowed, as 107 00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:54,439 if the memory that owned it refused recognition. Recognition is 108 00:04:54,480 --> 00:04:57,480 its own violence. I felt it like a slow unraveling 109 00:04:57,519 --> 00:04:59,560 imma chest, like a scene being undone that had been 110 00:04:59,560 --> 00:05:02,560 stitch clar those years. The ticket in my pocket became 111 00:05:02,600 --> 00:05:05,439 heavier with every bite. The thumb rubbing it turned into 112 00:05:05,439 --> 00:05:08,759 an involuntary chant. The venders grin softened into something like 113 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:11,560 contentment that might have been hunger. He turned a pocket 114 00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:14,879 watch between cracked fingers. It ticked out the whirl's seconds 115 00:05:14,879 --> 00:05:17,600 and made everything else wrong. If you had watched closely, 116 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:19,240 you would have seen me tilt into a scene that 117 00:05:19,279 --> 00:05:21,879 had been skirting the edges of my mind. A short 118 00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:25,120 maybe afternoon, children pressed close a decision small enough to 119 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:27,240 seem negligible and large enough to steer the rest of 120 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:31,160 my life like a keel. The carnival's rhythm shifted, bulbs 121 00:05:31,160 --> 00:05:34,399 stuttered like hal breaths. For a while, time tails guped 122 00:05:34,439 --> 00:05:37,560 into a single, unbearable instant. The sponge sugar that had 123 00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:39,759 been a child's loud congealed in my mouth into cartilage, 124 00:05:39,759 --> 00:05:43,879 in bonatiny, skeletal hand, cold with accusation. The texture was wrong. 125 00:05:44,480 --> 00:05:46,720 It was the texture of truth that insists on itself. 126 00:05:47,319 --> 00:05:50,560 I'd been tasting allegory and found anatomy. The little hand 127 00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:52,439 reached from the mound of cotton toward me, as if 128 00:05:52,480 --> 00:05:55,519 pulling me back across ears. It had been fabricated by 129 00:05:55,519 --> 00:05:57,839 sugar and memory, and yet it carried the precise cruelty 130 00:05:57,879 --> 00:06:01,079 of something real. There in the sterile gris green blue light, 131 00:06:01,199 --> 00:06:03,800 I understood with the clarity that blinked like a projector's bulb. 132 00:06:04,399 --> 00:06:07,000 Remembrance was not an abstract age. There was admission or 133 00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:08,839 another kind of living lie. The choice spread in me 134 00:06:08,959 --> 00:06:11,920 like cold oil. Confess and let the echo child fall 135 00:06:12,040 --> 00:06:14,600 into something merciful, or swallow and bury the truth under 136 00:06:14,639 --> 00:06:17,759 another layer of spun sugar and denial. My throat worked. 137 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:20,240 The ticket step had been in my pocket since before 138 00:06:20,279 --> 00:06:22,759 I woke. The locko's blood image had been in the 139 00:06:22,759 --> 00:06:25,639 sugar since the first bite. The vendors grin widened, and 140 00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:28,399 the jars behind him shone like a pantry of kept secrets. 141 00:06:28,759 --> 00:06:30,360 For a breath, for a life. I hovered above the 142 00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:33,319 cart like a muff over flame. My fingers trembled towards 143 00:06:33,319 --> 00:06:35,680 the skeletal hand that now lay in the countertop, donated 144 00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:38,839 from spun sugar, but bearing the geometry of accusation. The 145 00:06:38,879 --> 00:06:41,560 echoed child stood across from me, small and precise. A quiet, 146 00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:43,639 four shaped prop opened my eyes until they would not 147 00:06:43,720 --> 00:06:46,839 close again. The vendor leaned forward, his pocket watch, taking 148 00:06:46,839 --> 00:06:49,720 in a temper that insulted me. His laughter hung first, 149 00:06:49,720 --> 00:06:52,519 then then echoing, like a spool of tape, wearing grainy edges. 150 00:06:53,120 --> 00:06:55,160 I could not left an honest admission into the air. 151 00:06:55,839 --> 00:06:57,800 Some part of me braided steel into my tongue, un 152 00:06:57,839 --> 00:07:01,040 hid the confession behind a reheaticorm. Hot air rose into 153 00:07:01,079 --> 00:07:02,639 my face and then fell into a hollow I had 154 00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:05,800 carried for years. My hands closed around the locket and 155 00:07:05,839 --> 00:07:08,560 the stub. The letter of my satchel whispered, as if 156 00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:10,759 freeding through the motions I'd taken a thousand times to 157 00:07:10,800 --> 00:07:13,680 become some one else. Behind the carts, the faire as 158 00:07:13,680 --> 00:07:16,680 weel turned with the deliberation, as patient as hunger. Its 159 00:07:16,759 --> 00:07:18,519 lights cast a sheen of teal and a flare of 160 00:07:18,519 --> 00:07:21,000 red on the vendor's cheek. In the reflection of a 161 00:07:21,079 --> 00:07:22,759 dull jar, I saw the shape of my own face, 162 00:07:22,759 --> 00:07:25,160 with its new scar and an old, permanent shadow beneath 163 00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:28,040 the eyes. Memory is not only images, It is a 164 00:07:28,040 --> 00:07:31,439 sequence of small, tactile betrayals. I remembered the heft of 165 00:07:31,439 --> 00:07:33,160 the locket in my palm the first time I held it, 166 00:07:33,240 --> 00:07:35,560 the cooleest between my fingers, the way child's thum that 167 00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:37,759 traced the initials on its face until the letter is blurred. 168 00:07:38,399 --> 00:07:41,360 I remembered promising myself, freezing's explanations that looped back and 169 00:07:41,399 --> 00:07:44,480 softened into half truths. I remembered learning to set the 170 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:46,720 room alike with other people's stories, some my own would 171 00:07:46,720 --> 00:07:50,040 call into acceptable dust. But those rehearsed stores don't sit 172 00:07:50,079 --> 00:07:53,519 well with sugar. They can jeal into something sticky. The 173 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:56,120 vendor's jaws rattled, and each sound felt like a page 174 00:07:56,120 --> 00:07:58,879 turning toward me. When I stagger back, the well did 175 00:07:58,879 --> 00:08:00,759 not forgive me. I clutched the ticket to my chest, 176 00:08:00,879 --> 00:08:02,879 like a talisman that could hold a memory at bay. 177 00:08:03,439 --> 00:08:06,439 The vendor smiled as if fed his fingers dipped into 178 00:08:06,480 --> 00:08:08,279 a jar and came out sticky with a syrup that 179 00:08:08,319 --> 00:08:10,959 could have been mercy or more memory. He wiped it 180 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,240 on the counter with the casual efficiency of someone who 181 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:15,439 has dealt in absolutions and debts long enough to know 182 00:08:15,480 --> 00:08:19,000 they are interchangeable. The echo child's outline wavered like something 183 00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:22,040 half remembered and not yet named. For a moment, I 184 00:08:22,079 --> 00:08:23,839 thought I might step away from the cart and leave 185 00:08:23,839 --> 00:08:25,839 the carnival to its own machinery. But the fog had 186 00:08:25,839 --> 00:08:28,240 weight on the fair ground her teeth. The Knight had 187 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:30,920 already booked a seat for me in its audience. More 188 00:08:30,959 --> 00:08:34,120 detail came, and came with each tiny indulgence. A kitchen 189 00:08:34,159 --> 00:08:36,799 table I had avoided revisiting its varnish nick nearer one leg, 190 00:08:36,879 --> 00:08:38,879 an indelible ring where a cup had sat too long, 191 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:41,720 arranged itself into the scene. A high chair that had 192 00:08:41,720 --> 00:08:45,399 cough marked the wallpaper, my mother's hands, one steady at 193 00:08:45,399 --> 00:08:47,399 the oven knot, the other small and catching a drop 194 00:08:47,399 --> 00:08:50,039 of something. The sugar gave me not only images, but 195 00:08:50,080 --> 00:08:52,840 the small, ignoble logic behind them. How a look can 196 00:08:52,840 --> 00:08:55,200 harden into habit, How withheld sentence can become a sea 197 00:08:55,240 --> 00:08:57,320 wall that keeps up rescue and turns its build her 198 00:08:57,320 --> 00:09:00,159 into someone else. I tasted the way once more. All 199 00:09:00,159 --> 00:09:03,000 emission can bloom into a life of aftershocks. By the 200 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:05,200 time the horizon showed the first ill promise of dawn, 201 00:09:05,320 --> 00:09:07,279 the cart felt like a pressus, both behind me and 202 00:09:07,320 --> 00:09:10,360 inside me. The sponge sugar had offered me evidence, as 203 00:09:10,399 --> 00:09:13,679 if in proof of action. A small indigo ribbon, the locket, 204 00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:16,360 the ticket. There were objects that fitted like keys into 205 00:09:16,360 --> 00:09:18,879 a door I had been refusing to open. The vendor's 206 00:09:18,879 --> 00:09:22,399 grins rued into something like satisfaction. He tucked his slowtick 207 00:09:22,399 --> 00:09:24,320 into the inside of his coat like a private heartbeat, 208 00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:27,240 and tipped his hat. The echo child's small hand reached 209 00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:29,039 once more toward me, and I did not take it. 210 00:09:29,559 --> 00:09:31,519 I only let my fingers brush the stub until the 211 00:09:31,519 --> 00:09:33,799 paper popped under my nail, as if be degrading the proof. 212 00:09:33,799 --> 00:09:36,559 I could agree the truth. Walking away did not lighten me. 213 00:09:36,639 --> 00:09:38,360 I walked with the ticket warm against my palm and 214 00:09:38,399 --> 00:09:40,600 a taste in my mouth that did not sweeten. The 215 00:09:40,639 --> 00:09:43,879 carnival did not shrink behind me. It folded itself into 216 00:09:43,879 --> 00:09:47,600 the same shape I had carried for years, patient ritual, 217 00:09:47,639 --> 00:09:49,840 a stick, a place where things are offered and then counted. 218 00:09:50,480 --> 00:09:52,440 Each step took me further from the cart physically, and 219 00:09:52,519 --> 00:09:55,279 no inch closer to peace. I told myself how I 220 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:57,440 had learned something that night, how fragile memory could be, 221 00:09:57,559 --> 00:10:00,840 how tenacious, I promised myself I would carry the locket 222 00:10:00,879 --> 00:10:02,639 to a place where it would be examined, where the 223 00:10:02,639 --> 00:10:04,879 truth might be named in full, and maybe perhaps be 224 00:10:04,960 --> 00:10:07,720 laid down. The fog did not clear all at once. 225 00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:10,559 It loosened around my ankles and left the residue of 226 00:10:10,559 --> 00:10:12,720 spun sugar on my tongue, a memory that was also 227 00:10:12,720 --> 00:10:15,039 a wound. When I reached a street that had the 228 00:10:15,039 --> 00:10:17,120 cutesy to feel like home. I found the stot still 229 00:10:17,159 --> 00:10:18,840 warm in my palm, and a crater of a choice 230 00:10:18,879 --> 00:10:21,559 hollowed out where a confession might have lived. I thought 231 00:10:21,600 --> 00:10:23,799 of calling some one of the logistics of admission, of 232 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:25,440 where you would go with a thing like that, But 233 00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:28,360 the call would require names, and names have teeth. The 234 00:10:28,480 --> 00:10:30,879 vendors laughed and threaded itself through the morning air, as 235 00:10:30,879 --> 00:10:33,840 if practicing for later. I turned once, and in the 236 00:10:33,840 --> 00:10:35,639 thin wave of distance I could make out a single 237 00:10:35,639 --> 00:10:39,039 bulb from the cot steady as a blinking chastisement. Afterward, 238 00:10:39,120 --> 00:10:42,879 the small objects became mankers and accusations alike. I kept 239 00:10:42,919 --> 00:10:44,799 the ribbon in the inside pocket of my coat, and 240 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:46,919 would catch myself smoothing its leap with a finger when 241 00:10:46,919 --> 00:10:49,639 the knights were less impatient. The locket lived against my 242 00:10:49,759 --> 00:10:52,320 ribs like a small private can. If I pressed it 243 00:10:52,320 --> 00:10:54,360 there hard enough, the metal rowed itself into my skin, 244 00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:57,279 and the weight made me steady. Sometimes I took it 245 00:10:57,320 --> 00:10:58,919 out and held it to the light, trying to glean 246 00:10:58,919 --> 00:11:00,919 faces from its tarness, face, trying to decide if I 247 00:11:00,919 --> 00:11:03,919 could bear to know. Sometimes I told myself the truth 248 00:11:03,960 --> 00:11:06,679 would be a release. Other times I feared it would 249 00:11:06,679 --> 00:11:09,840 be a slow, neat dissection. The vendor had been efficient, 250 00:11:10,559 --> 00:11:12,559 the sugar had re arranged me into a new grammar 251 00:11:12,600 --> 00:11:15,679 of responsibility. The echo of the child's look followed me 252 00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:19,000 into the banalities of daylight. At the grocery, the cashier's 253 00:11:19,039 --> 00:11:21,320 daughter tugged a sleeve and pressed a fist into a mouth, 254 00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:23,639 and the gesture landed like a hand slapped to a berry. 255 00:11:23,639 --> 00:11:27,120 Place on quiet buses, the pale blue room, or some passengers, 256 00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:29,159 I found mine, and I imagined the echo in nez. 257 00:11:29,879 --> 00:11:32,600 The first wheels off distant conking became my own pulse. 258 00:11:33,320 --> 00:11:35,480 I walked past store from windows and felt the cots 259 00:11:35,519 --> 00:11:38,519 bulbs wink across the glass. I rubbed the creased edge 260 00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:40,960 of the ticket and felt the memory scab under my fingers. 261 00:11:41,639 --> 00:11:43,879 Once in a sleep that cycled like a dented reel, 262 00:11:43,919 --> 00:11:45,360 I dreamed the echo of child at the foot of 263 00:11:45,399 --> 00:11:48,240 my bed, not as accusation, but as negotiation, offering me 264 00:11:48,279 --> 00:11:50,000 a piece of cordon candy in exchange for an in 265 00:11:50,039 --> 00:11:52,440 the dawn truth, I work with the taste of sugar 266 00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:55,600 and iron in my mouth. There are practicalities I rehearsed 267 00:11:55,600 --> 00:11:58,120 in the waking hours, were to take the locket to 268 00:11:58,159 --> 00:12:00,559 be opened. What legal language might soften the edges of 269 00:12:00,559 --> 00:12:03,360 my half truths, whether to speak at the kitchen table 270 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:06,120 or the foot of a hospital bed. There are moralities 271 00:12:06,159 --> 00:12:08,519 I reread like bad weather. But the Carnival had taught 272 00:12:08,519 --> 00:12:12,120 me something stubborn. Acknowledgment is a small surgical thing, and 273 00:12:12,159 --> 00:12:15,080 you cannot perform it halfway without creating new wounds. The 274 00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:18,240 vendor's drawers held more than objects. The hell choice is 275 00:12:18,279 --> 00:12:20,960 in tiny, tidy jars, each labeled with a single verb. 276 00:12:21,639 --> 00:12:24,159 Some of those verbes were merciful, others chewed at the 277 00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:26,840 seams of intent. I do not know where that my 278 00:12:26,879 --> 00:12:29,200 reluctance was cowd as more complex than simple fear, or 279 00:12:29,200 --> 00:12:31,759 an instinct for self preservation so hard it had become 280 00:12:31,799 --> 00:12:34,360 a form of artistry. I know only that the taste 281 00:12:34,399 --> 00:12:36,919 of the truth is bitter sweet enough to make refusal seductive, 282 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:39,360 and confession is a work of a known mercy. The 283 00:12:39,399 --> 00:12:42,840 Carnival did not want to punish. It wanted acknowledgment that pursuiticipatient. 284 00:12:43,279 --> 00:12:44,600 It will weigh to the edge of the world with 285 00:12:44,639 --> 00:12:47,279 its teel light and red flustoms until one admits or 286 00:12:47,279 --> 00:12:50,840 continues to build finer and finer palaces of nothing. Sometimes 287 00:12:50,840 --> 00:12:53,240 in the quipered rhineerrans, I feel the echo child small 288 00:12:53,279 --> 00:12:56,399 accused tory stale like a current at my collar. Sometimes 289 00:12:56,440 --> 00:12:59,200 the texture of the cotton returns in dreams, not as comfort, 290 00:12:59,240 --> 00:13:01,919 but as evidence. I ran my thumb along the tickets 291 00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:04,480 fold and imagine a thousand lithel vendors waiting in vog, 292 00:13:04,679 --> 00:13:07,279 each with their taking time piece and their jaws of truths. 293 00:13:07,679 --> 00:13:10,080 I imagine myself folder at such a car, at a stranger, 294 00:13:10,120 --> 00:13:12,320 with my own jars, and I wonder whether I would 295 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:14,559 offer the sane, grudging smile the vendor offered me, the 296 00:13:14,559 --> 00:13:16,440 one that thanked me for my honesty, whether I gave 297 00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:19,399 it or not. The fog deigned at the horizon, in stages, 298 00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:22,360 like a cut and being drawn with theatrical slowness. The 299 00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:25,840 carnival did not leave, It only stepped into some one's reflection. 300 00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:28,200 The laugh followed me like a neighbor. I could not 301 00:13:28,279 --> 00:13:30,679 stop hearing. I fold the memory into my coat and 302 00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:32,759 pressed the locket against my ribs to feel its weight. 303 00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:36,080 It is heavy enough to make me. Fog curled round 304 00:13:36,080 --> 00:13:37,759 my feet, and a scrap a ticket warned the hollow 305 00:13:37,799 --> 00:13:40,000 of my palm, as if remembering me before I did. 306 00:13:40,679 --> 00:13:42,200 I did not know how I had returned to the 307 00:13:42,200 --> 00:13:45,159 shallow glow of the cotton candy cart, a fair ground 308 00:13:45,159 --> 00:13:47,759 around ahead, the anatomy of dead bulbs, and in steady shadows, 309 00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:51,240 a fairis wheel sighe in the knot quite distant, silhouetted 310 00:13:51,240 --> 00:13:54,200 slow gear behind a vell of teal Cyan Hayes. Somewhere 311 00:13:54,200 --> 00:13:57,080 beyond the cots, a distorted Collier pickkeeped and folded into 312 00:13:57,080 --> 00:13:59,600 the night, like a bad memory trying to cough itself awake. 313 00:14:00,240 --> 00:14:01,879 I only knew that the cot stood where it had 314 00:14:01,879 --> 00:14:03,799 always stood, in the margin of my thoughts, and that 315 00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:06,679 the vendor, toll lanky, a crack in the grin, watched 316 00:14:06,679 --> 00:14:09,360 me with an impatience that read like weather. His top 317 00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:11,440 hat caught the street light and made a hard silverl line. 318 00:14:11,480 --> 00:14:14,000 He did not move to greet me. His patience was 319 00:14:14,039 --> 00:14:16,799 an accusation worn like a glove. The stall smelled of 320 00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:19,480 stale sugar and something copper leaning beneath it, ascent that 321 00:14:19,519 --> 00:14:21,879 sat on the tongue like rumor. I eased up to 322 00:14:21,879 --> 00:14:23,879 the counter, because my feet obeyed the shape of the place. 323 00:14:24,559 --> 00:14:26,799 I pressed the ticket stuck between thumb and pad until 324 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:29,519 its edge is bit into my skin. In the COT's glass, 325 00:14:29,519 --> 00:14:31,720 my face was an uneasy scrawl washed up by film 326 00:14:31,759 --> 00:14:33,919 brain a man who had learned how to flatten confession 327 00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:37,279 into polite silences. The vendor's laugh leaped under his smile, 328 00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:39,519 smaller than a laugh and larger than a whisper, something 329 00:14:39,519 --> 00:14:42,519 that promised discovery would be painless if I agreed. He 330 00:14:42,559 --> 00:14:44,720 presented a corn of spung sugar with the casual care 331 00:14:44,759 --> 00:14:47,279 of some one offering a key. The threads gleamed like 332 00:14:47,279 --> 00:14:50,639 wet skin. I recognized the motion, the tilt of the cone, 333 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,720 the practice rasd the spunce weakness into the shape of childhood, 334 00:14:53,759 --> 00:14:56,440 but the sugar itself held in impatience I had not expected. 335 00:14:56,960 --> 00:14:59,639 Close up, it was not innocent fluff. Under the warm 336 00:14:59,720 --> 00:15:02,440 howlow of a dying bull. The threads resolved into impossible 337 00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:05,279 micro features, a loop that suggested an eye, a curl 338 00:15:05,279 --> 00:15:07,879 that set itself like a lip. When I reached forward, 339 00:15:07,919 --> 00:15:10,120 breath fogging in the strip of light, those culs twitched 340 00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:12,159 with the suggestion of motion, as if the sugar had 341 00:15:12,159 --> 00:15:14,840 the memory of hands shaped into it. A knlve refux 342 00:15:14,919 --> 00:15:17,200 rose in me to clutch experience into tidy boxes, to 343 00:15:17,279 --> 00:15:19,000 name it in shelve it. And I tried to file 344 00:15:19,039 --> 00:15:22,519 the scene into anecdote. Instead, my fingers brushed the spun 345 00:15:22,559 --> 00:15:25,279 threads and came awaysticky. They left a faint map on 346 00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:27,360 my skin, a sugary smear that read like a sentence 347 00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:30,000 written in betrayal. The vendor tilted his head at an 348 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:32,559 angle that was intentionally wrong, the sort of physicality that 349 00:15:32,600 --> 00:15:35,759 suggested the world could be bent into confessions. Behind him, 350 00:15:35,759 --> 00:15:37,879 a wall of jars winked like small prisoners. The syrupic 351 00:15:37,919 --> 00:15:41,240 glints trapped in glass. Each jar held some ambered suggestion, 352 00:15:41,399 --> 00:15:44,519 a smerror, like a fingerprint, a loop thread, something coaculated 353 00:15:44,519 --> 00:15:46,840 into the shape of a child's thumb. I thought of 354 00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:48,519 the locket in my pocket, the cheap watch with the 355 00:15:48,519 --> 00:15:51,879 cracked face. Everything had a weight to night and insistence. 356 00:15:52,639 --> 00:15:55,120 My first mouthful was hestant at test to see whether 357 00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:57,879 memory would arrive like a newsreel or a wound. The 358 00:15:57,919 --> 00:15:59,919 sugar folded onto my tongue and detonated into it, a 359 00:16:00,159 --> 00:16:03,120 massic moment that was both perfect and wrong. A small 360 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:05,360 laugh sunlight on a kitchen tow that I could both 361 00:16:05,399 --> 00:16:07,879 place and refuse. The thudding powder of a toy bouncing 362 00:16:07,919 --> 00:16:11,039 once against plaster. It was the smell of nail varnish, 363 00:16:11,159 --> 00:16:13,039 the taste of rust on the rim of a soda can, 364 00:16:13,080 --> 00:16:15,840 the soreness left on breath after a long afternoon, for 365 00:16:15,919 --> 00:16:18,159 a breath. The echo child, small solemn, a wash of 366 00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:19,840 faded pink and stained teel on a day to dres 367 00:16:19,879 --> 00:16:22,480 stood at the edge of my vision. She did not speak. 368 00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:24,879 Her face was a coin held to the light, thin 369 00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:28,320 enough that every surface underneath gleaned through acqusition. In her 370 00:16:28,360 --> 00:16:31,440 expression was not a shout. It was a measurement, precise 371 00:16:31,480 --> 00:16:35,279 and unrelenting. The sugar changed as I watched. A carl 372 00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:38,320 sighed and became the suggestion of a tiny hand. Another 373 00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:41,759 ribbon of pink lick fired into a tableau. Two small figures, 374 00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:45,159 one bent and one still, a scene assembled and sticky miniature, 375 00:16:45,159 --> 00:16:48,600 and presented like evidence. The fender's fingers moved an economy, 376 00:16:48,759 --> 00:16:51,559 arranging and reconfiguring the strands with the choreography of some 377 00:16:51,600 --> 00:16:54,000 one who had done this a long time. I wanted 378 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,399 to tell myself, we make our stories into palatable forms, 379 00:16:56,399 --> 00:16:58,960 because that is how we survive. I reached for more, 380 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:00,840 as if de Vron would die all the knife of Rico. 381 00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:03,600 Between bites, I flicked sugar from my fingers, trying to 382 00:17:03,600 --> 00:17:06,400 erase what I had seen. I ate faster then, not 383 00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:09,400 to taste, but to keep images from settling. Each wallow 384 00:17:09,480 --> 00:17:11,960 was a small ritual. I forced down a thread, and 385 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,799 the sugar delivered a micro memory, a sunlight afternoon, and 386 00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:17,200 a hand that found another hand and altered the angle 387 00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:19,920 of things, a scrape and a surprised nose, too small 388 00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:22,759 to be grief, yet exacting enough to be guilt. Sometimes 389 00:17:22,839 --> 00:17:25,279 the sugar offered sins impossible to reconcile what the person 390 00:17:25,359 --> 00:17:28,519 I had told myself I was. Other times served nothing 391 00:17:28,559 --> 00:17:31,359 but small, precise proofs that something had been shifted because 392 00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:34,200 of my hands. The vendor watched every motion with the 393 00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:37,039 patience of someone who knew the economy of shame. When 394 00:17:37,039 --> 00:17:39,359 I closed my fingers around the cone again, he tilted 395 00:17:39,359 --> 00:17:41,279 his head and laughed, a sound that starred it thin 396 00:17:41,519 --> 00:17:44,079 and wind imered like a spring. He moved his hands 397 00:17:44,119 --> 00:17:47,519 in slow, surgical gestures, spinning sugar that leaned into particular shapes, 398 00:17:47,599 --> 00:17:50,440 as though arranging a display of the past. His coat 399 00:17:50,519 --> 00:17:53,839 caught highlights of teal cyan and deep theatrical red. His 400 00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:56,839 hair was a friz crimson hallow. He handled the sugar 401 00:17:56,880 --> 00:17:59,880 as though it were a grammar of accusation. Make the shapes, 402 00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:02,759 present the scenes, See which nouns the mouth will accept. 403 00:18:03,319 --> 00:18:06,920 The echo childish closer between the exchanges. She did not speak, 404 00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:09,160 but she reached with a small, deliberate movement that made 405 00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:12,039 the air between us taut. Her eyes, pale blue rimmed 406 00:18:12,039 --> 00:18:14,720 with red, solemn, found mine every time the sugar offered 407 00:18:14,720 --> 00:18:17,519 a new image. She carried a half melted lollipop who 408 00:18:17,519 --> 00:18:20,440 sticked trips like a time stained pointer. Seeing her near 409 00:18:20,480 --> 00:18:22,240 the cart made the whole world shrink to a table 410 00:18:22,279 --> 00:18:25,599 of small items, a ticket stubb, a tarnished pocket watch, 411 00:18:25,680 --> 00:18:28,640 a child's freckle. There was a particular intim cruelty to 412 00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:31,480 how the sugar refused to be metaphor alone. It insisted 413 00:18:31,519 --> 00:18:35,720 on exactness, demanded particulars. The cat's mirrored surfaces caught warp 414 00:18:35,799 --> 00:18:38,839 reflections in one pain My face and the eched child's 415 00:18:38,880 --> 00:18:41,920 turned into the same elongated oval. The child's small freckle 416 00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:43,920 matched the thin scar along my left eyebrow in a 417 00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:47,359 madness of symmetry that denied coincidence. My mouth went dry. 418 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:50,079 I tried to tell myself this was an artist trick, 419 00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:52,240 a vendor slate born of glass and bobs and the 420 00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:56,359 fatigue of midnight. Instead, the sugar presented another tableau, a 421 00:18:56,480 --> 00:18:59,400 child's hand, tiny fingers curled against upon that look too familiar, 422 00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:01,160 the curve of ane that echoed a bruise I could 423 00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:04,640 have remember. I found myself toggling between two responses, like 424 00:19:04,680 --> 00:19:07,720 a pully tuned radio to nile an appetite. The nile 425 00:19:07,799 --> 00:19:10,039 came as distance. I could write the scenes into allegory, 426 00:19:10,319 --> 00:19:15,119 softened edges into acceptable abstractions. Appetite came as consumption. The 427 00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:16,839 more I ate, the more the sugar fed me at 428 00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:19,799 the exact things my denial had masked. I catched small 429 00:19:19,839 --> 00:19:21,720 threads from a cone and shoved them in my mouth. 430 00:19:21,759 --> 00:19:24,440 When the impulse to look away grew too loud. Each 431 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:26,799 bite made the vendors grin moder minutely at the corner, 432 00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,119 as if my compliance seasoned the next ship he would spin. 433 00:19:29,759 --> 00:19:32,880 Sometimes the sugar simply smashed on my palms, leaving marks 434 00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:35,799 that refused to explain themselves. The smear could look like 435 00:19:35,839 --> 00:19:38,039 a child's tiny palm, or a burned thread, or an 436 00:19:38,039 --> 00:19:40,640 old ticket soet through with memory. The jars behind a 437 00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:43,279 vendor caught thus mirrors in the reflected light and multiplied 438 00:19:43,279 --> 00:19:47,519 them lanterns overhead through churscua across the scene. Deep shadows 439 00:19:47,519 --> 00:19:49,839 swallowed the edges of the cut, while thin rim lights 440 00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:51,960 catched the venice profile and teel saw an in faint, 441 00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:56,319 theatrical red. The world felt deliberately staged. Being there felt 442 00:19:56,319 --> 00:19:58,559 like the admission price to an arch confessional, the kind 443 00:19:58,599 --> 00:20:01,480 that asks for coin and returns some thing heavier. Time 444 00:20:01,519 --> 00:20:04,960 lost its usual architecture. Bulbs blinked, no longer in sequence, 445 00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:07,880 but in response to something inside my chest. When I 446 00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:10,519 allowed my hands to still, the echo child stepped even closer. 447 00:20:11,119 --> 00:20:13,279 She lifted the half melted lollopop and toned it, offering 448 00:20:13,279 --> 00:20:15,920 its sticky surface to the light. Her narrow mouth was 449 00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:18,720 a small, precise gesture that read like a question without words, 450 00:20:19,359 --> 00:20:22,680 do you remember the sugar on ha lollopop clusson? Exactly 451 00:20:22,799 --> 00:20:25,039 like the spun cone at the vendor's hand. It was 452 00:20:25,079 --> 00:20:27,000 an echo of the same accusation the card offered in 453 00:20:27,039 --> 00:20:31,799 different timbers. The cart's mirrored interior assembled fragments into panoramic accusations. 454 00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:34,440 One instant, I saw a small tableau that matched to 455 00:20:34,519 --> 00:20:37,519 memory I had filed away under childish mischief. Her RaSE 456 00:20:37,559 --> 00:20:40,039 knocked a muffled thud, an arm gone wrong in its reach. 457 00:20:40,759 --> 00:20:43,920 The next sugar sculpture was more explicit, a tiny set 458 00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:45,799 of hands with a smaller one mirror of the motion 459 00:20:45,839 --> 00:20:47,559 I had once made, an indift finger placed with the 460 00:20:47,559 --> 00:20:50,440 care that implies agency, a tilt of wrist at nudge's consequence, 461 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:53,160 The vendor's laugh tucked itself into the corner of his 462 00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:56,000 mouth like a pet. The jaws behind him, full of 463 00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:59,720 syrupy glints, looked like receptacles of consequence, each sealed and 464 00:20:59,799 --> 00:21:02,640 lay by implication. Then the sugar did something I had 465 00:21:02,680 --> 00:21:05,480 not prepared for. A stretch of spun pink sided into 466 00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:07,079 the form of a child's hand that was the same 467 00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:09,680 size and shape as this mirror on my palm. As 468 00:21:09,720 --> 00:21:12,079 it folded, the echoed child's face lay with an awful, 469 00:21:12,079 --> 00:21:14,880 soft logic into my reflection. For it beat. The glass 470 00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:17,400 held both of us in the same frame, the adult's 471 00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:19,680 mouth in the child's mouth, occupying the same space, the 472 00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:23,079 frickle aligning with the scar. The scene collapsed into a single, 473 00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:26,359 unbearable convergence. In that instant, the world narrowed to one 474 00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:29,599 impossible decision. The vendor's eyes moved to my throat, as 475 00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:32,559 if he were reading a pulse. His tarnished pocket wash 476 00:21:32,599 --> 00:21:34,680 tacked on an impossibly slow rhythm that felt like the 477 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:37,680 sound of a conscience measuring its depths. The cart seemed 478 00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:41,000 to inhale. I imagined two outcomes, like doors in a corridor, 479 00:21:41,119 --> 00:21:43,160 one where I swallowed the whole truth and felt something 480 00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:45,200 unknotted and raw in me. The other were I tightened 481 00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:48,119 and hardened, learning instead to live in a better polished lie. 482 00:21:48,559 --> 00:21:50,079 I thought of the cheap watch in my bag and 483 00:21:50,119 --> 00:21:52,680 the silver locket that held an indistinct, imature relic I 484 00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:55,640 had kept, like an offering to forgetfulness. I forced my 485 00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:58,359 hands to move, whether I reached to lift the kune 486 00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:00,359 higher or to drop it away. My motion felt heavy 487 00:22:00,359 --> 00:22:03,079 with consequence, as though the world would rearrange itself around 488 00:22:03,079 --> 00:22:06,359 the single domestic choice. The sugar, as if since in 489 00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:09,000 the hesitation folded into a more explicit shape, a child's 490 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:11,480 size hand that massed the motion I had once made. 491 00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:14,440 The echo child's eyes widened though she still did not speak. 492 00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:17,920 I swallowed soft and spun sugar, and the metallic tang 493 00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:20,480 of something hid and washed my mouth. The scene inside 494 00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:22,240 my skull opened like a wound that let a shape 495 00:22:22,279 --> 00:22:24,720 walk out of it. The memory arrived in a spasm 496 00:22:24,759 --> 00:22:28,240 of clarity that was clinical and terrible. A summer afternoon, 497 00:22:28,319 --> 00:22:30,759 a spill of juice across anoleum, a small figure standing 498 00:22:30,799 --> 00:22:33,319 where a small figure should bee, and my hand, younger Clumson, 499 00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:35,279 moving in a way that altered the course of something brittle. 500 00:22:35,839 --> 00:22:38,319 It was not theatrical, It was the precise, awful geometry 501 00:22:38,319 --> 00:22:41,160 of one action re arranging another life. The sugar in 502 00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:42,920 my throat seemed to carry an image of the child's 503 00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:45,119 small hand culling, exactly as it did in my memory. 504 00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:47,720 My face felt stripped away, as if lace had been 505 00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:50,880 removed in the rawness underneath. Exposed to night air. Paine 506 00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:54,240 arrived as understanding more than sorrow. The vendors grin split 507 00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:56,319 at the corner, and for a breath I considered whether 508 00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:59,319 his happiness was my punishment or my libration. The echo 509 00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:01,680 child folded on herself, as though shrinking from something she 510 00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:04,440 had always known. In the glass, my reflected mouth had 511 00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:06,759 the slackness of someone who had surrendered something and not 512 00:23:06,839 --> 00:23:09,559 known whether the cost would be eternal or temporary. I 513 00:23:09,599 --> 00:23:11,559 touched my lips and felt sugar, and beneath it the 514 00:23:11,559 --> 00:23:14,079 press of a new fact. The night had done a knot. 515 00:23:14,119 --> 00:23:16,759 I had been living around for years, but the choice 516 00:23:16,759 --> 00:23:19,480 betrayed me. Even as if freed me, swallowing had not 517 00:23:19,519 --> 00:23:22,799 absolved me. It had enlatched a new hunger. The Sugar's 518 00:23:22,839 --> 00:23:26,559 narrative did not stop with confession. It demanded reckoning. The 519 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,920 vendor smiles sharpened into something almost like hunger. The jars 520 00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:32,599 behind him seemed to harm, each holding a different possible aftermath, 521 00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:36,279 a different small instrument of consequence. The echo child's features 522 00:23:36,319 --> 00:23:38,839 for the first time were as with something like expectation. 523 00:23:39,519 --> 00:23:43,279 It was not enough to know the knowledge wanted reply, action, payment. 524 00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,880 There were other possible reactions. I could have spat the 525 00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:48,759 sugar out and stamped my heel and left the cart 526 00:23:48,799 --> 00:23:50,759 to its light and its jaws and its patient vender. 527 00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:53,519 I could have pretended nothing happened, and walked under the 528 00:23:53,559 --> 00:23:56,119 ferre's wheel, where the bulbs blink like in different stars. 529 00:23:56,799 --> 00:23:59,240 But I had already tasted the exact geometry of my action, 530 00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:02,279 and it would not dull easily. Whatever I chose. The 531 00:24:02,279 --> 00:24:05,720 world made visible marks, A sticky smear shaped like a pump, 532 00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:08,079 clinging to my fingers, a bent fred to the concept, 533 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:10,319 the ticket stubb warm and oddly heavy in my pocket. 534 00:24:10,799 --> 00:24:14,319 These little proofs were the dealers accounting the carnival demanded 535 00:24:14,319 --> 00:24:17,599 a receipt. I staggered from the stoll with my hands marked. 536 00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:20,359 The sugar on my fingers looked in a grotesque echo, 537 00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:22,799 like the child's pom I had seen in memory. My 538 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:25,720 steps were uneven, the midway scene to tilt, as if 539 00:24:25,759 --> 00:24:27,440 the whole fair ground were breathing to the rhythm of 540 00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:30,880 the vendors. Slow watch. The laughing clown followed with his eyes, 541 00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:33,319 not stepping out into my path, but keeping me measured 542 00:24:33,319 --> 00:24:36,200 in his regard. As the fog thin and on flirted 543 00:24:36,319 --> 00:24:38,640 with the horizon. The first wheelsow. It was a slow 544 00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:41,000 bruise against the sky teal. So I am bleeding into 545 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,640 faint red lawn the room. The coup preceded, and with 546 00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:46,000 it the immediate pressure of confession, but a new appetit 547 00:24:46,039 --> 00:24:47,759 had begun to sit in my chest, A wind and 548 00:24:47,799 --> 00:24:51,599 hunger braided together the world beyond carnival had not changed 549 00:24:52,319 --> 00:24:55,359 my internal geography had I felt as though I had 550 00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:57,960 been issue a small private proof that an inemoral accounting 551 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,960 had been adjusted. The echo of the Claud's laugh threaded 552 00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,559 itself through my ribs and anchored there. I found the 553 00:25:03,599 --> 00:25:05,920 locket in my hand, it's image still obscured, and realized 554 00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:08,119 its blood had nothing to do with forgetting and everything 555 00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:10,799 to do with self preservation. I had kept that little 556 00:25:10,799 --> 00:25:13,000 hays for years because clarity was attacks. I did not 557 00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:15,519 know how to pay. Now, as the pale wash of 558 00:25:15,519 --> 00:25:18,839 pro dawns mudged the sky, I understood something else. The 559 00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,920 carnival did not end with my leaving. The vendor's patience 560 00:25:22,039 --> 00:25:24,119 was long, and the jars in his store were not empty. 561 00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,480 Whatever I had consumed that night would return in small increments, 562 00:25:27,519 --> 00:25:30,359 a smell, a sound, the way Charles laughed. My pull 563 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:32,680 on the edge of a sweater I thought safely folded. 564 00:25:33,319 --> 00:25:35,440 The stain on my fingers would fade, but leave a 565 00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,279 memory like a scar. The ticket's stub would go back 566 00:25:38,319 --> 00:25:40,640 into its pocket and warm itself against my palm like 567 00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,680 an ember. Small things would act as satellites to that night, 568 00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:45,240 tugging at me in ways that might feel like a 569 00:25:45,240 --> 00:25:48,000 torment were torment. I walked past the ferrist wheel and 570 00:25:48,039 --> 00:25:49,960 felt the lust of the fog cal up my uncle's 571 00:25:50,559 --> 00:25:52,799 The medway's lets were thinning into the clarity of mourning, 572 00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:56,240 but the colors remained teal cyan in the deep hollows, 573 00:25:56,279 --> 00:25:59,319 harsh theatrical red at the edges, film grain on everything. 574 00:26:00,039 --> 00:26:03,039 Laughing clowns, slow self luff rolled behind me like distant thunder. 575 00:26:03,599 --> 00:26:05,920 I had come looking for understanding and found instead a 576 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:08,839 question that had teeth. I had swallowed the truth and 577 00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:10,599 said immerged a hunger or I did not know if 578 00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:14,039 I could feed. The taste of truth lingered. It hung 579 00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:16,599 like spunched sugar in the back of my throat. Each 580 00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:18,640 time I touched my lips. In the days have followed, 581 00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,920 the memory came back in fragments, the precise angle of 582 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,119 a small hand, the sound of a toy's bounce muffled 583 00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:26,400 like a pulse, the vendor's grin, and the slow tick 584 00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:29,000 of his watch. Sometimes at night I could feel the 585 00:26:29,039 --> 00:26:31,640 echoed child's eyes on me, patient and unblinking, and I 586 00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:33,680 would rub my thumb along the old tickets stub until 587 00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:35,960 the paper is sotened under my skin. It was a 588 00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:38,920 small private barometer, how often I felt the itch to return, 589 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,079 how often the stub warmed like an ember in my pocket. 590 00:26:41,599 --> 00:26:43,880 If I have learned anything since that night, it is 591 00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,240 the acknowledgment is not an end point, but a hinge. 592 00:26:46,759 --> 00:26:48,960 You can swallow a fact and yet discover that swallowing 593 00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:51,599 rearrange the room. You can leave with stained fingers and 594 00:26:51,599 --> 00:26:53,880 a ticket. That stove remembers the moment you were called back. 595 00:26:54,559 --> 00:26:59,079 The vengeance jars do not empty. They wait with patient hunger. Sometimes, 596 00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:01,200 when the wind shifts, my breath fogs. In the narrow 597 00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:03,440 places of memory, I can still hear the laughing clown, 598 00:27:03,519 --> 00:27:06,039 soft echoing laugh. It is not an evil that leaves 599 00:27:06,079 --> 00:27:08,079 when you ask it to. It is a lesson that 600 00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:12,480 keeps giving itself. And that is the end. Thank you 601 00:27:12,519 --> 00:27:15,240 for listening, and I will see you in the next one.