Malaysia Island Honeymoon

When curious about the depth of a strange river, do you throw in a
nearby rock? If so, how long does it normally take you to realize the
futility of this supposed gauging? Do you ever? Do you run away
instead? Are you someone of the temperament who prefers to “go
it alone”? Is that the naked truth? Have you ever closed a wound
with hot glue? Is it the same moon every night? Will it rain today? If
it rained some object other than rain today, would you go out into
the streets to celebrate? What if it were raining down lobster claws?
Or Olympic gold medals? Or Japanese woodcuts of copulating but-
terflies? What would you be willing to go out into the streets to cel-
ebrate other than the wet wet rain?
Did you have any allergies that I didn’t already know about?
They’re explained as overreactive immune systems—what’s akin to
firebombing an amateur sniper, or just an amateur whatever with a
gun out in the desert looking for asylum in the heavily walled city
of your body—does this sound true? When did the phrase “uncon-
ditional surrender” migrate into our everyday lexicon? Are most cre-
vasses judged too short? Too far? Or just right? Should I sleep with
one eye open?
Have you ever witnessed a butterfly’s first flight? Would you want
to? Would you, with me? In “silence, exile, and cunning” is a nice
way to go, no? Would you be honest with me, or would I have to ask you to be honest with me in order for you to be honest with me? Is
there a problem here, officer? Are the graves ready?
When you “break up” with someone, doesn’t that phrase summon
the image of an Antarctic explorer’s ship foundering in a sea of pack
ice with the frostbite sinking in and the sled dogs baying at the moon
and the one football lost in the falling snow?
Are you coming back?
How many meters are we from the nearest bomb shelter? Is that
nearer or farther than the nearest white flag?
Was it my piano hands? My large feet? My lazy eye, the one I keep
open while sleeping? (Is it not possible that my other eye is simply
more alacritous?) Is the truth always naked? Could I dress up the
truth so ornately that it’s no longer said to be truth, dressed in, say,
a kimono or a lobster suit? If such were possible, then the truth is
clearly mutable, and therefore no truth at all, and so to change or to
come back to old loves is no crime whatsoever—so what about me
needs to change? Do you trust shamans?
Why not award gold medals for screaming? Do they even make
lobster suits? I imagine that if more celebratory items were made with
an eye toward actual proportionate sizes of anatomy, we would have
a much more educated populace, is that too much to ask? In a perfect
world, would you hot glue claws in place of these feeble little feelers
called hands? Alone, can you cook?
Wasn’t Ernest Shackleton an amazing fucking person?
Is your idea of a nice afternoon one spent in the company of six-
teen hundred butterflies in an artificial rain forest, or does that strike
you as a nice afternoon filled with sheer terror, one bound to end in
bloodshed? Butterflies taste with their feet, isn’t that frightening?
Would you, could you, opt for this transference of sense from tongue
to toes? Wouldn’t the day be filled with mostly the taste of sock and
sole? Would you walk into rivers to taste them, rather than to gauge
their depth? Or would it be best then to walk on your hands? Drop
stones and bombs with your lips?
Are you vexed by sorting recyclables? Do you keep an updated
travelogue? A running tab? A bird count? A wallet card listing known awarded another Stradivarius? Who’d take the fight: Shackleton, or
Jackie Joyner-Kersee? Is a gate not a gate unless it creaks?
In Goodnight Moon, why does no one say goodnight to the tele-
phone?
What is a body pillow, if not a bed? Was poetry once a forte of
yours? Is Irish something you only claim to have in you? Did firing
your first gun confirm or refute your suspicions concerning the
danger of a loaded weapon in the home? When did safety equipment
not come with safety labels? Why must we turn the gun’s safety off?
Given a black-and-white photograph, could you tell the difference
between the Antarctic tundra and the Saharan desert? If I had a nice
large mirror, would you look into it?
Are you comforted or dispirited by the fact that we no longer live
in a time when lazy-eyed trolls under bridges are a daily concern?
Will “cool” ever not be cool? Urns: a treasure? A burden? Or a talk-
ing point? If the moon could speak, what wouldn’t it say? Are you
being honest with me? Honestly, a man like Shackleton would not
have survived this lengthy desert crossing. Do you still not trust sha-
mans?
What strikes you as the most advantageous to survival: the fear
of bridge trolls, the fear of foundering in pack ice, or the fear of
butterflies? If, in an imperfect world, I unknowingly awakened in
you an allergic reaction, would you be mad, even though I specifi-
cally related to you the analogy of the amateur gunman storming the
body’s gates? Is there time for an unconditional surrender before the
bombing raids begin? What if I were that sniper, and you the target?
If I came dressed not as an amateur or as a gunman, but as a lobster
crawling over dunes on my anatomically correct claws, would you be
put off or intrigued by a large crustacean crossing the Sahara? If I
said, “I come in something, exile, and something else,” what next? If
I said, “I’m rain,” would you drop a rock on me? Or would you come
out into the streets to celebrate me falling from the sky
allergies? Would you hit a nail with your Stradivarius in order to be