Jim and Bill Discuss Graze Matter

Bill and Jim were two college students who had stumbled across the writing of Ice Rivers on ABC tales while taking a course in Obscure Art taught by the estimable Thornton Krell.

They were working a shitty summer job and passing the time with bullshit conversation as they themselves were still covered with fertilizer from earlier in the morning.

"What's the deal with Graze Matter anyways?" said Bill to Jim as they were trimming and pruning the rose bushes before hiding in the truck and catching some undeserved zees.

"It's another installment in compulsive futitlity, Bill."

"Did Ice have any plan we he began?"

"Have you read A Place Liike This yet Jim.? That's his idea of planning. He figured he might kick the bucket so what the hell."

"No, I haven't read it."

"Join the billions" guffawed Jim.

"Graze Matter, what's it supposed to mean?'

"Like most wistfull expressions, it's got three or four meanings," replied Jim with a shrug and a drag on his doobie.

"Give me one example" said Bill after not smelling a rose.

"Matter to be grazed. Not acutally devoured or studied; rather to be picked up at random, forgotten, rejected, ignored, picked up again, opened to any page, re-read and briefly understood. If the grazing becomes habitual..well that's allright too."

"You got another so called level, Jim?' Bill said while coughing.

"Well, Ice is no spring chicken. Have you seen his beard and his hair. He's a gray. He's a boomer and they're all turning gray but apparently (according to him) they still matter. Not only do the Boomers still matter but old farts in general matter."

"Hit me with another one."

"Well, Ice like to portray himself as a bit of a  microscope, an accidental intellectual, a man who realizes that thought is an abstraction and feelings are concrete."

"Bullshit....Just the opposite is true" Bill said with complete confidence.

"Consider your feelings for a moment before we proceed"

"Go ahead, I'm considering" ( Bill was positive that he wasn't feeling his consideration.)

"Is anyone entitled to tell you that you're feelings are wrong while you're having them?"
"Of course not their mine"

"Is anyone entitled to tell you that your thinking is wrong."

"I suppose so, my thinking is a lot more flexible than my feelings."

"You and everybody else, pal. Abstract is a lot more flexible than concrete."

"So what's that got to do with graze matter."

"Where do you find your feelings, Jimbo?"

"In my gut..in my heart"

"Where do you find your thoughts?"

"In my brain."

"What's in your brain besides your thoughts/"

"Gray matter?"

"That's right. And gray metter matter matters?"

"In an abstract way, yes."

"so gray matter is a physiological as wll as metaphoric allusion to abstraction?"

"wow"

Jim and Bill stepped behind the bushes, where Art, the old fart who was supervising them cojuld not see them even if he were looking instead of sleeping in the custodians office.

They finished the joint.

"Well, how would you characterize the writing itself...are they essays...short stories,reviews, politics, biographical, fictional, humorous, tragic, electric or eclectic."

"Given those choises, I'd say eclectic"

"So if you say eclectic...would you say they fall into a gray area.?

"Amen."

"Voila"

"Whoa"

"Okay, William here's one for you. How about Ain't Virgil?

"I read it as kind of a civil war Ghost story."

"For which side was Virgil fighting?"

"The rebels, the renegades."

"And what color was their uniform.

"Uh, gray."

"How, bout his pal. Do you realize that most people who report being abducted by aliens describe their abductors as being very similar to the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and they call those creatures 'grays'"

"There's another one too"

What's that James.

"Well gray is neither black nor white. Gray is non-judgemental.

So are you trying to say that Graze Matter is non judgemental or that Ice Rivers doesn't want to be judged/"

" All he wants to do is live and while he's alive he might as well write. I think that's what he wants."