On a day like this, you might be forgiven. Not just for the thoughts you're having, the actions you're about to take, but for the sheer audacity by which you cling to the same old thematics, spinning the same stories from the same textile, the reciprocity growing inwards onto itself until finally the whole thing just collapses into suffrage and deliberation. The starkness of the sun precludes the enticements of more banal banalities and/or banalisms by which one might be persuaded to become the alpha, the omega, and potentially a growing subset of all the things that might rest between.
      Wharton's Wharf extends beyond comprehension, a kind of pocketed space internalizing an expanse which recedes from everything else within it until and unto a speed quite remarkable; in short: the Jewish eucharist. In this wharf, or rather, on a bench within it, sits a man who might not be Wharton himself, but a stylized version of it/him. The place has been standing for as long as anyone cares to remember. By my estimation, that'd be about twenty years or so, but I say that mostly to be accurate -- nobody particularly cares about this ramshackle collection of deadwood and urban decay -- since when I reference any collective attitudes, I primarily mean to say that it should be taken literally -- to say it has been standing for “longer than anyone cares to remember,” that is -- since normally that phrase is used to denote something particularly ancient, and it is not the case here -- my not-home is simply forgotten -- most likely due to a lack of interest, though some blame may lay at the feet of its developer. Home it is though, or if not home, then at least a place where one might set and rest for a period of time upon a bench.
     My ass begins to express a degree of pain from sitting upon said bench, within the mezzanine. There's not aught to be doing here. By all means, I shouldn't even be here -- what, with construction’s byways and signage. Nobody's worked on or in this building for a while, though. Things left laying around, it fits.  It's time to be going, I think. Considering the series of actions before me, however, it becomes apparent that I might as well not. A bench is a place, and most places are more or less the same, if only but different when specified further.
     The kaleidoscope weighs heavily in my pocket. The thing's weight, I mean. It's overly large, and in an environment where there are sets of rules defining and guiding certain things, it stands to logic (by virtue of said?said-hinted-at rules, I can't recall which) that a thing which is overly large might as well be overly heavy. A smaller kaleidoscope might have sufficed for my purposes. Or no kaleidoscope at all. I've got no use for it, but it's got a use of its own, so I might as well realign my priorities.
     Ah, yes... the weight is as anticipated. I've not the best working schema, internal-like, of the correlation between the amount of space occupied or displaced purely by eye, but I estimate nonetheless that it's more massive than it should be. Shall I, then? Might as well, comes the reply, the unobtrusive reply, quiet and snaking, slissine. Nodding, nodding. Up, and... yes, there it is... no, nothing. Damn thing's busted, innit. Demiurge strike me down if I don't throw you in the bay. I will, will I? I will.
     I'm not much of a gnostic, more akin to its A, but not strictly. It occurs to me, however, that it might be a divine wind which blows me from this resting place towards the majesty of the open ocean, by which I might finally rid myself of this broken object. No, its betrayal is too severe to simply fix it, or to cast it aside summarily. I've carried my overlarge kaleidoscope from... there.... From, well. I've carried it here, to this place, Wharton I am, or maybe his ghost, haunting this unfinished internecine transigence, forever unfinished. It does nothing but decay now, and myself as well. I won't t have the kaleidoscope adding tot more of the same. What little is left here of grand design, optimistic opportunism. lies crumble.
     Disgust. Tight in hand, the kaleidoscope and (i set will depart this park bench sans-park.
     Bones creak, beard caught in the zipper again, the smell of musk and mould carried alofting on the breeze, an internal system of and about self-containment by which there can be naught yet interning. The owl nests here, I know. As do I, though I know not yet in which manner I might be said to do so.
     Mannequins peek out from unfinished storefronts, they're latearly to the party, or maybe earlate. In the buff they showered up, segments of wood and wireframe splaying themselves, hunching, the gamut in motion of human facsimile. I’m seized by fancy’s firm-fingered grip across my grundle, roughly from the base of the scrotum to the opening of the anus, that meaty byway spanning undesirables. I'd like to see what they look like through my scope. Where before there was nothing, again there's nothing. Idiot, I say. Damn idiot. Couch your hopeless optimism, you addled simp. There's no reason you could expect it to function now, when it didn't so recently. What was it going to do, fix itself? Idiot. Rage froths and bubbles, then runs its course.
     Wharton, you old fool! I cry. Naturally! I was wrong. O! I see now. Yes! it could reasonably be expected to function, but! it was missing a step. Nestled between states of functionality lay one of two things: chance or action. Had I found myself at that point with a functioning kaleidoscope where before it was useless, ceteris paribus, its newfound functionality might be attributed to pure chance. Beyond the limits of my understanding, there may have been universal energies at play preventing the thing from working at one point in space/time, yet rendering it functional at another. This is, of course, not what happened at all, and it would be safe to discard entirely the preceding scenario. But if we instead assume some kind of consistency in states between any two arbitrary points (in space, as well as time, or in other words: at discrete, inequal intersections of all dimensions of observable space and time) then we must conclude that there needs to be at least one action taken by an outside observer in order to repair the device. The device? What is this device? Is it even a kaleidoscope? Focusing on it is difficult. Hours pass, then more hours in solemnity. Eventually I get tired of the whole thing, put my cock away, and stop masturbating in a public restroom.
     I stop for a minute in front of the mirror. Lurking in its depths, I see my mother, who’s telling me what I look like, but some of the details are off. Your brown eyes like the russet flanks of wild horses in the high desert spring running through the sagebrush coarse oiled hair a bristling gleam under the dawning sun… she says. My eyes aren’t brown. A quick look in the mirror might confirm that, but her current disposition, mirrorlike, raises some potentially insoluble epistemological dilemmas I’m not equipped to resolve, given solubility of course, and casts serious doubts on the diagnostic capacities of my mother-in-the-mirror. Why should I listen to her? Aren’t I in front of a mirror? Might I not bypass the inaccurate intermediary lurking within the mirror, and instead simply look upon my own reflection in the mirror? I take a good look at myself in the mirror, carefully noting the positions, characteristics, and qualities of all features which serve to distinguish me from others bearing the same categories of physical structures, and, internally marking a nascent resolve to compare myself thereby and forthwith at every opportunity to said “others,” turn neatly on my heels, to walk out the door.