True Value Hardware

The key maker's work bench stands hidden behind a partition, as if they were trying to hide it, but they can't mask the sound. Waiting my turn, I watch the man at the works load the master key in the slot to the left and the blank into the one at the right, check alignment, pull levers, I hear speed scream as the saw carves topography in the brass, slivered curls and grinder's dust shooting down to the pile of menaced metal collecting in the cavity below the machine.

I wonder if it was like that when the cosmos spawned me, was there a master key and furious, abrasive wheel?

It doesn't matter, it can stay secret. But here's the sad part, even though I come into this moment with a specific relation of grooves, I still try to make myself as if I myself made and make the terrain, as if I create myself, as if in my grandiosity I can improve on the work of the key maker. Even as the assault of the saw that cut my form from the virgin metal still tears through me, and I sense I owe my being as much to irritation as to attraction, and I realize with fear, or irritation, or stimulation, or ecstatsy, the saw's not finished yet.