You are Out of It

"those words - obscure and dark - leave them perplexed." -Ovid

I

A young boy was once privy to his own imagination. He had also heard of an idea of butterflies. He had always seem them during time spent in the park, fluttering about, bumbling through the air in front, behind and above his face. The way they seemed to clumsily pound against the air with their incredibly light wings and bodies made him form a primitive and general kind of contempt for them all; this was despite typical interpretation of butterflies as creatures of beautiful and peacefullness.

He would remember learning that they were all once caterpilars: creatures monstrously greedy for a high number of legs. They would get so wrapped up in themselves that at one point they would emerge in superman-esque fashion after sometime of wallowing isolated in their personal preoccupations.

II

It's easy to see he had quite some distaste for butterflies (but not moths: moths were separate from his notion of butterflies; their lack of flamboyance and overall quiet nature left him with a peace of mind he seemed to find nowhere else.) even before he had learned that they were the cause of most of the worlds horrific weather patterns. he had once overheard on a television program, a young scientist telling the shows host that when a butterfly flaps its wings, the displaced air produces a chain reaction which eventually causes rainstorms, hurricanes or tornados somewhere else on earth.

III

When he heard this for the first time, he became enraged. He fumed quietly at first, mulling over the implications in his mind.

"Either," he thought to himself, "these butterflies are completely oblivious to the fact that they are the genesis of miserable destruction the world over; that they are so mindless that they don't realize that as they follow their minute impluses that they are in fact making the world change to make room them.

[IMAGE HERE]

"Or," his mind paused to formulate the words of his next realization, "they are simply malevolent; turning from caterpillar to their winged form only to enhance their ungodly powers of destruction."

IV

He spent the next few days in the park, watching his new source of scorn waver softly over the grass field, just below the sky. other children always looked at him curiously as he stared meditatively at the butterflies but would quickly lose interest when they would discover his total disinterest in his peers and his complete self-absorption. he himself didn't even notice that he was unaware of the other children, and probably would not have cared. However, one little girl continued to pay particularly close attention to him. She satisfied herself invisibly as she had a distinct love of awareness for things unaware. she remained quiet to his eyes as he went about his business with the miniscule creatures of the park's broad lawns and manicured gardens.

V

He soon realized his the implications involved in his own movement, but quickly decided to absolve himself of any kind of crime. he knew that he too displaced air as he moved, and that he may also be the cause of such horrible disasters. for a few days after realized this, he would spend most of his time attempting to lay absolutely still on the floor, trying to to disturb anything, breathing ever so softly. soon thereafter, he decided why it was he should allow himself to move: for one, his movement did not depend on the control or abuse of air to facilitate itself; his movement was through the air, not against it. and besides that, his movement would from then on be used to limit the movement of the malevolence of butterflies.

[IMAGE HERE]

so from then on, he would use his time and movement to capture all the world's butterflies to save the humanity from further elemental tragedy. he would whatever time was necessary to expel these rude beasts from the stage of decency.

VI

the next day, with a small box in hand, he placed himself in the park near his house to begin the procedure to contain this immoral species. but his idea was only to capture, not to kill; to kill would only force him into the same disasterous moral position the butterflies had created for themselves. instead, he only wanted to contain them and watch over them.

VII [pagination gets out-of-control here. ill try to demonstate it "below the text" (what irony)]

He had to pause ever so briefly to consider why he was thinking the way he was; he noticed something uncontrollable within himself which irritated him; just then, something specific seemed to gain shape in the air in front of him. however, he quickly lost his concentration when the image of a young lady appeared in front of him, and, upon being notice, she quickly walked away.

He noticed he was on a page; he noticed he was surrounded by words, and that he could see in front of him everything he had been doing in the past week: everything about his fascination with butterflies, his plan to capture them, everything was laid out in words, and he could see the edge of the page. a panic flew over him and he grabbed for the letters, tearing them to pieces, but as the page turned, he could see the words mimicking him, teasing him anew. anything he could think to do was outside of him, right in front of him.

VIII [techinically IX, but who the fuck knows at this point, right? also, lia wrote, "HAYWIRE! MATERIALITY" in the margin . . . lia, we have totally lost control of what is going on. so awesome]

as he ripped up the letters, letters mocked him on. the world faded away around him and he was consumed by his obsession. later, after night took over, he grew tired but couldn't look away from his words. he fell unconscious and probably dreamed of a world the same as the one he fell from.

he had died overnight, in the cold park, and was found by the young girl. she touched his arm, felt it cold and unnatural, and fell back scared. she looked at him again before covering her eyes as she started crying.


DEMONSTRATION OF OVERLAPPING/REPREATING PAGINATION

VII a

He had to pause ever so briefly to consider why he was thinking the way he was; he noticed something uncontrollable within himself which irritated him; just then, something specific seemed to gain shape in the air in front of him. however, he quickly lost his concentration when the image of a young lady appeared in front of him, and, upon being notice, she quickly walked away.

He noticed he was on a page; he noticed he was surrounded by words, and that he could see in front of him everything he had been doing in the past week: everything about his fascination with butterflies, his plan to capture them, everything was laid out in words [check out my sweet use of 'prose enjambment']

VII b

[top section of VIIa is repearted here, but in disarray. visually, the boy is ripping the sentences words and EVEN THE LETTERS! YES! apart. we see the destruction above with the narration below, undermining his destruction.]

He noticed he was on a page; he noticed he was surrounded by words, and that he could see in front of him everything he had been doing in the past week: everything about his fascination with butterflies, his plan to capture them, everything was laid out in words, and he could see the edge of the page. a panic flew over him and he grabbed for the letters, tearing them to pieces, but as the page turned, he could see the words mimicking him, teasing him anew. anything he could think to do was outside of him, right in front of him.

[we need to take a closer look at how this works and make sure we are positive it sits right. something about it aches me, and im not sure if i just dont totally unerstand it or if we weren't careful enough when we were reviewing the potential layout. also, didn't we want to have a few pages where there might have been only one or two sentences per page, huge font and intense layout. fuck, that was a good idea too. did we give up or just forget?]

also, im going to do at least one more draft in an attempt to make the language more 'child friendly.' after all, im trying to be the henry james of children's fiction, not the derrida of graphic design - - or at least that's what im telling people.