Movement: First
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A Conversation: Four Imaginary Prototypes
by Julius Nil

1. The Bats Of The Tongue

	Nested not in my mouth, the bats of the tongue flutter to life. Describing arcs of angels with frosty, spat-out breath, lowered from water crystal clouds, through vaporous atmosphere to sight...I see them now. They are illuminate and blurry (unlike the prototype).
	If mastering them - by which I mean, forcing them to speak - requires algebra, so be it. I am reconciled to reconciliation; sleep for the sake of sleeping.
	There is a line of thought which supposes that, once released, the bats maintain no connection to the nest. That is, they don't belong to me. This makes me think of Russian fairy tales.
	I wonder if it wouldn't be better to keep the bats inside me. Rather than release them to wing through the empty air, painting faint suggestions with the leathery tips of their wings, I might swallow them and make them mine.
	Like the philosophers, I am preoccupied with certainty.

2. The Material Soul

	But, like the poets, I lack the stomach for bats. Their shrieking emanates as gas, embarrassing me at parties.
	I take consolation in the memories of others peoples' bats and in the tiny, black footprints they've left on the pages of books. These physical remnants, contrary to Aristotle, could be the material soul.
	Where, for example, is the distinction between Benjamin and Berryman? Is this not the question of soul? Their bodies, after all, have evaporated. Each took his own life as the advent of a border.
	Similarly, Michigan seems like a dream. If it weren't for the signs, we might still think ourselves in Indiana (or Nova Scotia, for that matter, or Helsinki, Dublin or Dubai). Soul, then, and the beginnings and ends of things, and bats and belonging: these are all questions of signs.
	I do put down my pen from time to time, as certain as a philosopher that the bats, temporarily abandoned, will return. Their roost pre-dates them; not as a roost, apparently, but as a rafter or a crag.
	I depend on fangs: little rodent torsos, flapped on pterodactyl wings. I sink my teeth into their tiny veins.
	It is generally rabbits, however, that magicians pull from hats.

3. The "New"Conversation

	Do you remember this conversation? - "Which one is the Big Dipper?" - "I don't know."
	I am trying to hold a conversation with myself as a child. I send questions fluttering noisily through the dim expanse between now and then. There is no response. My mother suggests it is the child-me who ought to ask the questions. The answers are what I do next.
	There are boxers known as "counter-punchers." It is not pejorative.
	My mouth feels like an enormous pie, stuffed with fruit. The crust is ruptured, bleeding berries.
	We are stitching together a quilt of stars. The aim is a universe-sized blanket under which all of us may sleep. Pulling together scraps of light from a million light years away, a million years ago, and from over there, yesterday.
	I act as if I am not interested in a conversation with myself as an old man; as if I'll know it when I get there.
	I clear my throat. Something escapes. The sky grows slightly darker: a syllable-eclipse of the sun.

4. The Orchestra Of Everyday Life

	If I say "ah;" if I release a single, incontinent bat, an opportunity arises. Remember that blanket we're making? There is room enough for lonesome bats to nestle, is there not?
	This is just one suggestion of many thousands of possible suggestions: wrap the bat to keep it warm. Add your own "ah." The two will be indistinguishable, identical twins. Still, two bats are never the same as one.
	Meaning: the sound of your voice, too, has the makings of the material soul.
	There is a buzzing on the line. Can I be sure it's you? The spaces between the stations, the hum that remains after all the noise is gone: whose voice is this? It's only background until we think of it as god. (Devils in the interstices of vinyl record grooves.)
	Where is the you in all this eulogizing?
	What do we mean when we say "meaning"? Is it turtles all the way down? I know the Dipper now. Its distant edge indicates the North Star, the brightest in the sky. I can trace its handle, pointing earthward. It is pointing at someone else who thinks it is pointing at me.

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Julius Nil
Julius Nil is a London-based, American-born writer, musician and instigator. His novel, A Thousand Apparatus: an amputation fantasy in three parts, awaits publication. With his brother, Olias Nil, he is a member of the Nil Antithesis, whose debut ep, O My Friends, There Is No Friend, is out soon on the Mixx Tape label.