{"id":65,"date":"2007-06-15T17:24:12","date_gmt":"2007-06-15T22:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/blog\/?p=65"},"modified":"2007-06-15T17:28:48","modified_gmt":"2007-06-15T22:28:48","slug":"turtle-hippo-splinter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/everything\/turtle-hippo-splinter\/","title":{"rendered":"Turtle. Hippo. Splinter."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"an<\/a>The illustrations in this story make no sense. I see the images whether my eyes are open or closed. I don’t know where they are coming from. Are my eyes even open?<\/p>\n

A turtle hatchling on a beach? Why do I feel no sand under my feet? I’m on a train maybe. Could be on a bus. There are other people around. I smell cold sandwiches in paper bags. I smell leather clothing, like old shoes. Or a purse.<\/p>\n

I can’t feel anything. Am I in a coma?<\/p>\n

I hear a soft sound, like squeezing toothpaste. Like unscrewing an Oreo cookie. The turtle moves. The turtle doesn’t move. I can’t tell. Is it making the noise? What does an egg yolk sound like?<\/p>\n

When I shift my head the image fractures with a feeling like a brief loud buzz would feel like if you felt it instead of heard it. Like a jangle of a struck nerve. Like maybe there’s a splinter of something in my brain. Is that possible?<\/p>\n

I think about shaking my head but I can’t make myself do it.<\/p>\n

I feel like I’m sitting up, but I can’t tell. I twitch, or at least I feel like I twitch, and now I see a baby hippo.<\/p>\n

\"Newborn<\/a>I don’t know what to do about the splinter. Would a splinter in your brain work its way out the way a splinter in your hand would?<\/p>\n

It feels like it’s been days.<\/p>\n

At no time do I feel the splinter trying to work its way out. Shift my head slightly, image fractures into static with the jangle-buzz feeling, then image is instantly back.<\/p>\n

I still smell old leather and cold sandwiches.<\/p>\n

Am I dying? I don’t feel like I’m dying. I don’t feel like much of anything. If I were dying, wouldn’t I be dead by now? Days of nothing, it seems. No hunger. No thirst. Just a baby turtle, then a baby hippo, illustrating a story that doesn’t tell a story.<\/p>\n

Something happened, but I don’t know what happened. There is a splinter in my head. A short-circuit. A feeling of people around me, a soft sound, a feeling of sitting up, a smell of clothes and stuff people carry with them in the mornings. A turtle and a hippo.<\/p>\n

How long have I been like this? What is up with that splinter?<\/p>\n

How long can I live like this? Turtle, hippo, why don’t I feel afraid? I want to be afraid. I want to be afraid of the splinter in my head. I feel no fear. Is that how deep the splinter goes?<\/p>\n

Am I breathing? I can’t tell if I’m breathing.<\/p>\n

Turtle. Hippo. Splinter.<\/p>\n

[*]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The illustrations in this story make no sense. I see the images whether my eyes are open or closed. I don’t know where they are coming from. Are my eyes even open? A turtle hatchling on a beach? Why do I feel no sand under my feet? I’m on a train maybe. Could be on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rL5j-13","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}