in the Garden of Eden

I like apples. I like how firm they are and how white the flesh is, and how fast it gets old and brown. I can watch them change and become different than they were before. If you keep eating them they stay white longer, and they're lumpy in my throat.

We get lots of oatmeal, here. It slides into my stomach like wet concrete, solidifying there so that I'm not hungry, but not satisfied. They only made the mistake of giving us apples once, and even if the others forgot them, I didn't. The feeling of swallowing it, going deeper inside me to digest. It was different from the oatmeal, very different. I could feel it inside me for days, satisfying.

They give us little packets of cinnamon jelly with the oatmeal sometimes, to make it taste. They can't give us cinnamon, because then we would accidentally inhale it and sneeze and be just that far out of the routine. They mix the cinnamon with gelatin and water and sugar, I think, and preservatives. I'm not sure what the preservatives are, but they're there. They must be there. It doesn't taste, otherwise, their cinnamon. Just plastic.

They don't want us to taste. Taste is experience, experience is knowledge, knowledge is dangerous and liberating. If we had knowledge we could do something about being here, we could know what the spots are, the ones that are sometimes animals and that are sometimes not animals.



None of us know why we're here. It's something I know I should remember, though. It's a white, white place, very clean, and there are beds in one room and the sheets are always new and made and constricting to sleep in, like an anaconda. Another room has shower stalls, and the tiles and faucets are always shining. I tried rubbing soap on them to make them less shiny, but the next day there they were again. Then there's the outside. Yesterday I petted a tiger. It came up to me and nuzzled the back of my knees, like a housecat. I think it wanted food, but I didn't have any with me. Oatmeal is hard to carry. It wouldn't have liked the oatmeal anyway; big teeth like that are made for flesh. It might have liked the apples. It might have liked me.

It's sunny today, again. There are a few clouds, but they never seem to move, hanging there like they were pasted on by children playing with glue. But there aren't any children, here. I don't think any of us have sex. I must have had sex, because I remember it. It was dark red, and sticky. Much too much red to have here, but I am not sure: the sun is very red, sometimes.



There were lights, before, and then it was dark and there was sound everywhere, and then there was the sun and the bears. The bears were fuzzy, hazy outlines of what bears usually are, but they were there because I could see them. But maybe they weren't bears. I wonder what else they could have been.



Sometimes I know things and I don't know why I know them. That oatmeal is like wet concrete - I don't know how I know what wet concrete is like, what it is even. It's a detail I remember, from something, but the details are temporary and they're gone as soon as I remember them. Ships in the night, what does that mean? I know that these are things I used to know, I used to be familiar with. But I can't place them. I want to have a context. I want to know what these things are that I know. Why do I remember dolphins?

I had a cat. I've seen enough of the leopards to remember: it was black, and had short hair, and had green-brown eyes. It would sit in my lap. But if one of the leopards sat in my lap I would suffocate. I wouldn't suffocate, though, because I wouldn't die: none of us die. None of us have any reason to die. If we had reasons, or if we had a choice, we wouldn't still be here.

I want to know more things. I want to know what wet concrete is really like. I should be able to remember that. If I can remember a thing, I should remember what it is like, and why I know it. I remember steak; the vultures would like steak. It would be bloody for them. They would enjoy that.



The apples were an experiment. It didn't work; some of us learned what we had forgotten and we never saw them again. They looked so elated - as if they remembered something. There were wolves that day, outside, and the wolves ran from them. They shouted at the wolves and the wolves ran, and shouted back. There was so much noise, because we knew how to make it, because we learned. I forget things.



They wear white uniforms, white shoes, white stockings. I've been here so long I've forgotten what stockings felt like on my legs, but they wear them. They bring little cups of different colored things, and they feed them to us. Red ones taste like cherries - even though we never get real cherries. Some people say the yellow is banana, some say lemon. White is always sour and sweet at the same time. Most of us get red, or white. I traded my red for someone's yellow once, and I almost remembered something. Real taste, real flavor, beyond the different colors. There was candy, before, and some people said the different colors of candy tasted different. They all tasted the same, though, with dark brown inside.

There was something called local color, that added to the flavor of a place. New Orleans was a place with many colors, and many flavors. I remember it: it tasted like everything. I told some others about it before they stopped me. I wasn't supposed to think about New Orleans, it would make me confused, they said. And it had, so I thought about the horses that were outside that day and how pretty and shiny they were. I think maybe horses were not always so shiny, but now they are.



There are the two rooms, one with beds, one with showers. There is outside, with sun and with hyenas that zoom and shout and make great noises. There are people in white shoes and there are people who stay here, who are comfortable here. There is oatmeal and little cups of things to eat, and each of us gets a cup in the morning and a cup at night, and we swallow the things inside them. There are no apples. I want apples. Apples would taste and have real flavor, and texture, and I would take so long to eat each one.

I would take small bites, and keep eating, so that they would stay pure white and bloody red and be pretty, and sweet, and tart, and I would eat the whole thing even if there is poison in the seeds. My hands would be sticky with the juice; my throat would be full of apple pieces I swallowed too fast. My belly would be hard from eating so much and if I was not wearing pants that had drawstrings, I would not fit. I would eat so many apples, and then I would know everything there was to know, and I would leave this place and I would be fine and normal. I would have a house and a job and children and friends, real friends again, and everyone would like me and think I was smart. I would eat, and eat, and remember, and know.



Once, before I was here, it was all dark, with little moving lights. There was a great noise, and a different motion, going sideways instead of forwards, and sound and light. Before, the world was not in such short pieces; it was big and it was always there. Now the world jumps, in strange ways, so that I forget things that I used to know. I forget things.

It is sunny, again, and the clouds are still there. No one else smiles at the sun and turns their face towards it. Sometimes the sun is warm, and sometimes it hurts and is dark and cold, but when I put my hand towards it it is hot. Then they give me an extra cup with little red things to eat in it, and I taste cherries, and the world jumps. How can the world jump when I do not move: this is what I could know if I had apples.

The sun is red and gold and green and has so many colors in it. They can't control the sun, because if they could it would not change. They know we want to know what will happen. There were great Spanish bulls today, running at the sun and clashing brilliantly. One of them ran towards me but stopped just before I was impaled. I felt lucky; they hit the sun sometimes and it hurt. I had more little cups, many cups.



I could take a bath in apple sauce and it would be good for my skin! I could throw it to the scavengy lions and then they would leave the sun alone and not chase me any more. They must like apples, they can bite them. Apples that look like blood through my eyelids, that are whiter than the sun.

And I know I keep calling them animals. What else can I call them, if they are moving and are alive? The clouds are what stay still. One day the animals move like turtles, lumbering and slow, and the next day they move quickly and become sharks, and rush at the bright spot in the middle of everything. That I know is the sun because nothing else is so bright. It has to be! What else can be so dazzling?

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