today i typed "craigslust" instead of "craigslist."

Some misguided advice,
overheard: "if you like to write, you should really get a Twitter."
occurs to me: this piece could ultimately prove Twitter-esque, that is, if twitter is, in fact, to chitter.

In a conversation witnessed, (which wants to say “privy: to but has some doubt) something of interest: “ear witness,” which basest research confirmed as “The Earwitness: 50 Characters,” a work of Elias Canetti. First blank filled, I scoured the internet for body text, pausing intermittently to wonder at life on Internet B.G. (Before Google!) The found passage starred namesake, The Earwitness, who dons a pair of “secret ears” at his 9-to-5 as all-knowing, never-forgetting.
Come Happy Hour, The Earwitness removes his ears and loosens his tie from a single-Windsor. He buys a round for the bar. People like him, people trust him.


The Eavesdropper (The Earwitness) is either architect or voyeur. He has either dreamed up or found his shelter in an enclave. He is perched there, as Guardian, or is hidden in plain sight.
The Overhearer has strayed, or was perhaps windblown, from her trajectory and has happened upon a safe space just below an eave. Resting there, she is part of the façade.

Eavesdropping finds itself on the outside of social etiquette, though nowadays the Suits call it tapping, (careful-not-to-type-taping) and it’s been cited as a necessary means of protection.

protests: I am awfully polite, really! Of course, there are some days in which I lose sight of social graces because my hair needs washing and I've mislaid my lip balm and music only plays through the left of my ear phones and I can only hear half of "The Gift," the short story John Cale recites to me about a fatal magic trick. In the wake of monogamy, a special delivery, but it's lost its sex without "Booker T." I read somewhere that Lou Reed scribbled it sometime in college and I'm failing as a writer and as a daughter and as a set of eyes, or lungs or legs, but not yet as a pair of ears.

I should sit, from now on, ears cupped, on the subway,
eyes could close to convince an ocean in each palm.
And like the wave, we can never get away from our source.