Text Excerpt:
03:32AM - car will not start. Leave it parked on a side street and walk away from the bars. The familiar human noises fade into the obscure white noise of cicadas and grasshoppers. The iridescent beetles are welcome at this time of year
03:54AM - almost half way home, at peace in the relative suburban silence. Feel nervous when car headlights illuminate my shadow for longer than that should seem like normal. We move at the same pace, the car and my body, so that in my silhouette I appear stationary and the ground is peeling away, rushing away like water on the shore after it has finally climbed the beach as far as it can go.
03:59AM - the car stops and I leave it behind, still walking west on the same street. The driver was apparently reading house numbers, something harmless, and found the one they were searching for and parallel parked on the left, facing the wrong way. Now they were idle and so my shadow grows taller and wider until it no longer seems proportional and takes on a menacing quality. My own shadow, against me. I turn north at last, after many blocks with familiar names, and continue walking with the shadow now by my side, rotating around my body as I cross beneath each street light like a pendulum.
04:01AM - last time this happened it took over an hour to get home. Realizing it was likely that I had taken the wrong route, for now I’m passing beneath train tracks, whereas before I remember very distinctly walking along the sleeping freight car until I came to the point where it coupled the car in front of it, and I used both my hands to help myself climb up and over the coupler, all the time fearing some sudden . This time, though, I pass underneath. The train is stopped on the bridge overhead, and the two cars visible from the street below are framed on either side by bunches of trees, which are onyx-colored at this hour, just before the first blue wave of sunrise. From left to right, the two cars are tagged FRAGILE LIMIT. The statement is like all graffiti: deliberately esoteric, meant to be appreciated by those in the know and puzzled over by everyone else.
04:10AM - the cicadas are now sleeping and soon, so will I, though the day is soon threatening to break wide open. I wonder how many people like me have intended to return to their car the next day, and then the next day, and then the next, and so on, and eventually the car remains for decades as passersby question its origin, and the paint begins to fade, becoming as bland as the sidewalk, invisible solely because it has no use to anyone.
Fragile Limit was cut to tape by the new Total Works label, which is run by Tiny Mix Tapes favorite Cities Aviv out of Memphis, Tennessee. Fragile Limit has 9 “tracks”, but you can stream either side of the tape or download via Composer 4’s bandcamp.
More about: Composer 4
