Monday 31 July 2017

Are the people who design cars aware that their designs look more and more like giant training shoes, for Emma

This will probably be a brilliantly coloured animal. They drink freezies from Wendys and they like to kiss lizards and they imagines they live in the moon, man the fucking moon. Or maybe they actually lived on Saturn. They also live here. They have made loads of burritos and plastic watches and small mechanical beetles that solve intricate mazes. We believe they intend to sell them to astronauts if they ever make it as far as Saturn, but for them, this has already happened, so they are just keeping the stock updated. 

Then run laps but they cannot operate stopwatches. They spend most of their time sitting and making ice cubes, really. We don't know how they do it and the ice cubes are way too cold, like, they'll freeze your drink. But we watch them freeze bits of dirt and construct pointilist math equations and very miniature zoos and we wonder what they're missing. 


The look out to the stars a lot through a telescope. Just a toy one. It's a long way to your place, they imagine. We tell them it's a long way to anywhere. They offer us a burrito. Sour cream and refried beans in the gear holes. They tap their toes and imagine very small creatures jumping from star to star to nebula to planet to asteroid, tracing geometric sentences all across the tiny plastic lens.

Sunday 30 July 2017

practising the piano for years but never quite getting good, for Emily

This animal is grey. They are gradual. Like eating cereal on a dreary Tuesday morning. They smile, but not so you'll see it very often. They are kind. They clean the fireplace when you are not watching, so you can sleep without worrying about chimney smoke suffocating you. They arr mostly clean. You may pretend they catch mice. But they don't. They are methodical for stretches,  or they are resting, or they are building miniature cities out of sticks in the backyard.


We haven't seen this animal with many friends. But we can't see a number of our animals anyway, so we don't really know. They like raspberry wine in a saucer. Or wood shavings in a smile pile under its pillow. We'd suggest making them a very plush silk pillow. They will live for quite a while, we imagine. And their dreams etch the entire solar system with the sounds our segment of outer space would make if it wasn't a vacuum.

Synesthesia, for Sarah

This animal is quiet. It laughs very often. When it is tired, it spasms in its sleep, like a small animal dreaming of running and eating and licking and scratching and sniffing, all at once. We have observed it spanning through windows, looping around chair legs, calling out at all the edges of your computer screen. It appears in many, many places at the same time. We cannot tell if It is all the same long animal at once, or just the same animal occupying various distinct spaces at the same time.


It will lick you gently when you are eating a meal. It opens your shoeboxes and plays imaginary evacuations when you are not in the room. It is very very cool and slimy, but only when you offer to pet It. It will sleep around your showerhead or at the edge of your sink. It enjoys rain but it's laugh can become insatiable. You can sing to It, but we don’t know quite yet how it will respond. When you wake suddenly in the night It will be everywhere and on the moon and It will smell like your childhood hiding place and you will sleep again, easy.