There are hooks from me to every object in this room. Hooks attached to my eyes, hooks protruding up my nostrils into my brain. Supposing I took a bottle, smashed it on the floor, kicked the shards into every corner, spread them around the floor - the cut from these hooks would still be deeper, even if I walked around barefoot.

“He might have sunk into mental chaos; instead, he triumphed through discipline, work and meditation.” Words written in the book about Van Gogh. Who was he? That he that might have but instead triumphed? That is, who almost sunk but was saved by discipline? Which one was that?

Or this one, this book by Dogen under my sheets. I had been reading it last night. It’s quite different, you see. With your little hooks a-moment, you see. He says this. “The multiplicity of one flower is five petals, the opening of five petals is one flower.” That’s good, I thought. The multiplicity of one is five, the opening of five is one. Becoming is what happens, quantity is what is. But there’s something missing in all that. A bit more about the one and that five. It got captured by ol’ Jimmy pretty well, you know the man, the one who sang about his friend, the end: “Five to one, baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive now; you get yours, baby, I’ll get mine, gonna make it baby if we try.”