the water is so calm today i want to get in. i climb down to the surface. i'm thinking of mirror genes. i bought an amethyst crystal at chuck thurow's sale, and noticed it was cracked and repaired and i traded it for a book called twins. as i read i realized i had read the previous book by this twin, about his autistic twin and his phobias. he talks about mirror genes the begin to work in the womb, and wonders what mirroring happened between himself and his sister. i think about my sister in a more longitudinal way as a quasi-twin, and the mirror gene the stillborn sibling who came and was gone between us. crazy, hmm? why these thoughts on the calm water that really just mirrors the sky and some gulls and dragonflies shadows floating by. a lazy mind, sub-verbal mind, might be doing something, some osmosis, some unconscious sharing. 
also i got a real sweet solid book, please pay attention please: bruce nauman's words, which r. covets and which is mines. she asked for and i give her this tiny book:

and i said, you cannot have bruce, you have your little jimmy, bruce is mines. whereas in reality bruce will likely remain with r. after i've gleaned what it is i may. 
i think bruce is smart, he may have thought himself the smartest kid on earth, maybe many of us have, but i think jimmy was a smart kid, like an old man in a cartoon kid body, though he also seems obtuse. frankly i haven't read much jimmy corrigan. these books came out of gumball machines. i lived a block from jimmy's alter chris ware, and i got some blue line drawings from the life of jimmy when he lived in new city newspaper weekly. whoa, rambling. 
the last thing i'll say is i was telling my friend oh god i forgot her name too at open produce. i thought oh dang i'm always telling her stuff lately, not really conversant. and she walks away. and riding the elevator i say out loud, just walk away, i'm just an old coot, and i don't know where that comes from, i'm old compared to her, but she's not comparing, or not that i know, it's just me. well, and her, but i don't know her that well. and r. said daily om said, don't compare yourself and i thought oh was i doing that again, not just now but you do, and it's true i do. i compare myself by jealousy, not thinking through what the jealous object's actual life is like. wishing i was not like, say, eno, but like that, a guy who just brimmed with ideas and continuously lived by art. you do what you do, r. said. why is enough not enough? well, i'm getting there, it's getting to be, enough.
i was telling my friend something, god, i just blanked it, going on like that, jeezus, anyway she did walk away and i said well i'll be an old coot, but then thinking as i do about actual coots, they are so cute, and the old and the young alike are probably cute, if coots get old. and why do they say old coot, crazy as a loon, when these birds are just what they are, doing what they do, sure some are eccentric, some old, some young and serious, some silly, like us, i guess that's why we say that, because we see mirror genes everywhere, in the most farfetched unlikely places. 

p.s. i think this was partly informed by watching deepak chopra's son's film about his dad and my annoyance with the old coot, who's about my age. i thought jeezus he is so blase, and he's just talking and tweeting, he never stops, and he doesn't even convince himself. so please god don't let me get to be an old coot like that, i don't care about the money, it ain't worth it. they could never pay me enough. i'd rather be an actual old coot.