\u201cNow close this book and remake the world.\u201d
\nI close my book.
\nI must remake.
\nHow does one \u201cremake?\u201d
\nOne starts by unmaking. <\/p>\n
I unmake my book.
\nI unmake my room and my house and my street.
\nI unmake the world bit by bit.
\nI take every species and mineral and feeling.
\nI look at them closely and unmake their carefully woven parts. <\/p>\n
Now I am left with the unmade.
\nPages and stomachs and crystals and fur and support beams.
\nThe word \u201cMicrosoft\u201d and the connection between siblings and an unremarkable sunrise.
\nThey float separate in nothingness.
\nI leave myself made so I can remake. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s like taking apart a ballpoint pen and putting it back together.
\nOnly this time, I decide how it gets put back.
\nMost things I remake the same:
\nOrgans in the body, ink printed on paper and skin, trees growing above their roots.
\nThese all stay the same. <\/p>\n
But there would be no point if I did not learn from my unmaking.
\nI learned that the word \u201cbemused\u201d is confusingly similar to \u201camused,\u201d so I make them different.
\nI learned that there is no need for extra qualification of cousins.
\nThey are all just cousins now.
\nI change many little things like those. <\/p>\n
I do not change the ugliness.
\nIt was there when I started, the shadow and the death and the violence.
\nIt frightened me to look at, and I was glad to unmake it.
\nBut it is important, and it is real, so I put it back.
\nIt is what balances this whole worldly contraption, if correctly assembled. <\/p>\n
I look over my remade world.
\nIt has a remade room, and a remade house, and a remade street.
\nMy book has been remade exactly as I remember it.
\nI replace my book upon its shelf.
\nI watch the remade people out the window, continuing their lives. <\/p>\n
–\tFirst line from The Runaway Species<\/em> by David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cNow close this book and remake the world.\u201d I close my book. I must remake. How does one \u201cremake?\u201d One starts by unmaking. I unmake my book. I unmake my room and my house and my street. I unmake the world bit by bit. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1071"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90578"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99188,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90578\/revisions\/99188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}