support_beams raze i can feel where they've curved from age and pressure, in the part of this room where i've spent the most time standing and not standing, easing a record onto the platter before letting my forearms and elbows and toes support my weight for as long as they're willing. for almost a hundred years these beams have sat beneath carpet stained by someone who lived here before me, marked in the strangest way, as if the fabric chose to deal with a skin condition by resorting to some questionable home remedy and all it has to show for it now is the odd random splotch of discolouration. they must have used a softer species like pine when they were building this house. something frail enough to make you wonder. i never fear the wood buckling. but sometimes, when i move from the weakest structural spot to a place of greater strength, the floor groans beneath my feet. it sounds like a voice crying out in fear or pain, and it scares me. it's never what i think it is. it's only wood that's old enough to be my grandfather, trying to tell me something in a language i won't understand until i'm past the point of hearing anything at all. 220103 ... unhinged exposed but mighty my tattoos held me up the way nothing else could 220104 what's it to you? who go blather from