# 16: Stigma and Release
What I see in my right eye is something dire, the pinch of order, a cosmic calyx, a flower’s stigma, a medium-sized black hole (though it weighs 62 times the mass of the sun). Stretched and sprung in my right eye is that stuttering intake of breath, that momentary lift and tremulous cessation that is prelude to the tsunami of a sneeze or an ejaculation.
My left eye is all release, fecund looseness—pollen trumpeted from the flower, powdering the air, leisurely spermatozoa rowing up the lazy river (no hurry no hurry), pointless heavenly bodies drifting towards future agglomeration.
My right eye is pointed. My left eye is pointless. My left eye monitors drift. Henri Michaux writes in his book, Tent Posts (Green Integer, 1997), “On the eve of his death, the man of action and work realizes—too late—life’s natural span, the one he might have known had he only understood, through constant intervention, how not to act” (p.29).