x
we accidentally imagine
by andrew yoon
this is a book of mutable poetry. it exists along a
field of probability with an effectively endless number
of possible realizations. every time this page is opened,
a program generates an entirely new version of the book.
some elements change more often than others. the random
seed for the version you are looking at is 184486.
because there is a seed number stored in this window's url,
refreshing this page or opening a link to this url
will render the exact same contents you see now.
if you would like to share or keep a link to this version of the book,
you can use this .
if you want to visit or share a random new version of the book,
use this one .
to link to an exact version of a particular poem,
hover over the poem's title area and click the link
which appears that says "fixed link". you will also
see one that says "mutable link" - this points to where
that particular mutable poem lands in a random new book.
try following the mutable links of a particular poem through
different versions and see how it transforms.
you can print or (if your computer has the ability) download a
print-ready pdf of this version of the book using your browser's
printing functionality. some elements of the display will change
to make it more suitable for printing. (you may want to modify your
printing settings to disable the automatic header/footer generation
most browsers do.) please note that as i make
improvements to the mechanics of the program, the content you see
here will likely change, even with a fixed seed - if you want a
truly fixed version, please use the printing method.
the code for this entire project is under the gpl3 license and is
completely free to read, use, and redistribute. the most up-to-date
code is available on github
here .
andrew is a composer, programmer, poet, and bad pianist. you can
find some of his other projects online at his personal website
here .
...
we accidentally imagine
by andrew yoon
seed 184486
it is 2026. we wonder what to say next,
and the wind is still blowing.
these situations
branching these situations
possibilities after
impossible
into after
saw first as as going we saw
good now
instincts but left different
circumstances for different. we
smiling.. we are
because one of don't because one
amplifying across a group of people
who don't thought thought
we accidentally
imagine ourselves as having for
a head this strangely
a triangular roof or
something similar and we are
sitting in the front passenger
seat of an old car and someone
we care a lot about asks,
who are you?
think for a minute, and then
another. we aren't able to answer
with anything except a held
hand, and we somehow find
ourselves caring
just because they asked.
they can't answer either,
and the grip gets tighter
and they aren't making eye
contact but that's okay because
we aren't looking anyway
strange wooden boxes attached
to bodies, heads
eyes which still say so much,
eyes without laughinglines
which always find new
to smile about
behind our ears, the way this
piece of paper falls on the
ground, the sound of an overhead
lamp switching on
about nothing in
and
particular, wanting to want
everything and wanting to want
nothing, to feel everything and
to feel nothing, or at
least something
getting tighter and we remember
how okay it is, how
beautiful it is and how funny it is
that poetry and music might
be the same thing after
sometimes and being naked is okay
too, that sometimes things
lead to other things, and
sometimes they don't, and
sometimes things just happen and
they keep just happening and
they don't stop. they don't
stop and it seems like they
never will, so it starts
making sense to just accept
this and close
smile a little but somehow
this feels impossible. we
get frustrated and start to
do things we don't want to
do, blaming other people
for things nobody had
control over in the first place
and jumping to conclusions
and making assumptions
about other people and their
intentions and what they
what they are afraid
forget that they are us, that
their grip is getting tighter
and that nothing is okay for
them either.
that their boxy head is
crying and we have been trying
not to notice. we remember
that we are all the same
person born into different
beautiful thing. this
beautiful thing. this is
beautiful thing.
because the longer we
stare at the
we are sure they even
matter.
we are breathing. and we
are still breathing. one
thought and another passing by
in the street while we ask
ourselves if this is going
anywhere
focusing on something else like
the way the smoke is
drifting away from the incense
stick, or the sound our eyelids
make when we blink. is there a
place for rushing anymore?
the softmurmurs again,
reminding us about our breath: and
a little blue bird lands
on the windowsill. it is
singing.
, pointing met
hats.
what they
enormous do
going
of
whether we it
walking by see us say
okay sometimes we ourselves
happens which
we
and that shadow
that the
how
shapes
we were
have
, and close our
come
anything couldn't prepare us
they
the
way that
know sitting
sometimes and out
the clock
well and that the
execution
and sun warming
and to
and
the wind
tangling wires into
these bizarre shapes, rugs
with strange colors and
melodies waitingly, taking deep
breaths before the speech where
we finally speak our
minds: "won't everybody
please, please stop this
cruelty? can't we see how
unnecessary it is?"
window creaking under winds,
some oil spilled in a parking
lot.
who's before and after or some
some behind throughingly, a
manual for writers of research
papers about electrical
engineering and game theory,
complex analysis and early
marxist painting; the
walls of this place have
shoulders
sagging, somewhere in these
pages an actual answer to a
question that matters. a new pair
of jeans, a holiday
decoration left up for months, a
lightbulb which doesn't fit even
though we could have sworn the
size was right at the store.
color combinations making us
feel sick and wonder why we
care about the dissonance,
why we should prefer
the other. we conclude that
we're all just bits of air
moving with the waves of some
song we can't hear: now
banging on the wooddrums, the
thoughts and the doubts, hopes or
imaginations throwing fists at the
organ keyboard, some body of
loud waters, some
electrical structure groaning in
rains
the breezings, the sine
waves, the eyeballs thrown
left and right or up and down
or is that a sign of
happiness, of
peacefulness? who's to tell what's
harmony and what's dissonance?
who's to tell the words of the
song when each moment's just
a few bits of data?
see the picture from a
pixel, hard to find the poem
through a word
the arounds and behinds
lost somewhere in the mix,
the breath being exhaled
before we even noticed it was
inside our bodies, each note
rising just a little higher or
just a little more
wallpaper:
it happened. where the
music got faster. where the
blue became green, where the
light was switched on and the
newer waves began to
interfere with things and distort
the shapes, canceling out
or multiplying or
performing more complicated
operations until the noise is noise
and the signal is noise and
the noise is still noise yet
somehow wider, more sideways
and spinningly and
uppingly and backwardly, more
harsh and out of sync, now neon
colorlines and batteries, strange
gaps in the spiral
patterns but something about
them which makes us feel the
walls are moving further away
and the room is becoming
smaller, that one moment is
another and the second hand is
somehow different this time
around. we cannot help but go to
sleep again, this time with a
strange smile and already
looking forward to coffee. this
time with socks and a thicker
blanket. this time with the
windows open: and in comes the
cooler air.
quietingly, the
softmurmurs not trying to say
anything in particular or
convince anyone of anything,
prefering to let things just exist
the way they are and stay the
same when they need to stay
the same and change when
they need to change, or not
even need to stay the same or
need to change but maybe
instead want to stay the same or
want to
just happens. it just
happens, and it keeps just
happening. the softmurmers not
even speaking about what's
going
but instead just
mentioning about whatever is on
letting it out and letting it go,
the sound waves not
disappearing but echoing off a
thousand surfaces and every
blade of grass, split and
muffled and distorted and
echoed until they sound like
dead trees, the sun pushing
the waves around a little
through the
in the air
moving around.
and
we care a lot
how the
their just sort of own. our
eyes eyes eyes
and
floating
in, that our foreheads
warm enough now open the
windows now. sensation in feel
this stinging
our hands from
scrape caused each wooden
panels freckle and scratch the
just
like outside foreheads it
foreheads the
what caused each wooden
panels and
freckle
sort of happen just sort of
own somehow
caused each along the scratch
on how
might be
stinging sensation in
what caused each scrape
scrape along
scratch on
knot lot we knot,
close own for
the
enough
sensation breathe and now. we
wooden wooden and scrape
caused each groove and
the panels freckle of of
someone we a lot wires
of if these these things
happen for a moment and
that might outside it might
floorboard came
on on
someone did purpose
the corner of
empty except for the little
grooves in the
smile.
going in such a beautiful way
that we
off it, noticing just how
inconsistent things are, how blurry
and arbitrary the
differences seem between things and
people and ideas, how musical a
painting can sound
seems
how
questions which keep making their
way inside our mouths as if
we never could learn from
the
answer and instead only become
more
throw things at the walls with
some inexpressible anger
screaming and shouting with a red
face and bulging veins,
fists again
the door not even caring
what's on the other side, too
caught up with the idea of the
door being there in the
place
if causing
flicker and the stove to begin to
smell like something is
burning so we all try to remember
what we had done in
kitchen last but we can't
remember, and even the
remember make us shout
words, make us scream with our
fingers and pound harder and
wood is splintering here and
appears to budge this time or
that
and again and again
we never seem to
the changes until they've
already happened. or at least
they are
happening. we
the clouds evaporating and
the
getting so slightly warmer; a
single row of bricks painted a
different color. who
through
when whenever the
againagain the words repeatingly
as we notice a little
cottonfluff drifting toward us. it
sticks
again
from. a
thrown every instant, fields
of possibility so
terrifyingly wide staring us in
eye so intensely we have to
look away
little
landing, and flying around
again. flying, landing, and
flying around again.
systems all around us
and our
breaking apart piece by piece as
we keep trying to glue
things back together with
words and theories and poems
and cathedrals
architectures in the mind and and later
in concrete, we begin to
feel jittery as we realize we
haven't stood up in hours, this
chair and its arms a little too
narrow, pressing against the
sides
much significance to us now
when the lights are
flickering so subtly. we pray but
don't know who we are praying
to
want. fading. fading.
next
actually these years or if that
nothing unexpected question in
return: ?” then and then we, and
laugh can't we these see why
first place when it when it
minute second comes to, so good
moment or,
anything. idea that nothing that
nothing we an are: “who are
ourselves in return: “who are:
don't know. and unable to
answer., aimless a comes
important
able to read we, we laugh and
we. we laugh. laugh we
laugh,
from the walls, distant
clanging of a
breathe with the
passing
little
and somehow we feel it in our
toes even though we can't
quite tell why the wind
against the window,
harmony should point
another,
sort of climax
elements and trajectories
there all along as
were some
where
fall in this
notice
from
strange sense of
now the ventilation fan
banging; we notice a coin lying
the ground but we can't make
out which side it landed on.
do we care? is it good to
knew? we are staring at
coin and the coin
back.
we keep asking
questions like “will this make me
more interesting to ask what
it would sound like if the
leaves on every tree were poems
written on little sheets of
paper and everybody in the
world began to read them out
loud all at
then the wind began to blow
and the
the air all around and
everybody just watched it happen
in complete
can't help but smile a little,
hugs the stranger to their
left and we all begin to
laugh. we ask ourselves
another question we can't hear
because
poems, and that's just fine
realize we didn't want to know
the answers anyway when
there are so
and beautiful things all
around us anyway. we just keep
laughing and grabbing poems out
of the air, sometimes
deciding to read them and
othertimes using them as napkins.
the wind, the wind is
laughing too.
thinks they
they a ways write a poem to
write chord to build a and roll
up is tones words
combinations of imitating toes make
up make up for their
emptiness to think of it that way.
the breaking smallvoiced
reminder we are we are a of sand
grain a language even when
thought shapes are not down
shelves down friend name we
don't remember even years
remember even sun
from the sound or phone left
playing music, back
asking themselves are asking
questions wondering where they
toward are hurtling will
finally stop finally
minute a minute
which changing to make sense
of that we remember that
sense be left be
they happen
allowing things mean away things
mean allowing even actions
and the temperature
outside today, today
difference between so minds and
near spoiled food being by
remember that remember that
having no control over
ourselves, ourselves thing. this
thing. this. and let
following strange, at
same falling
marbles in
not
particular seeming to wonder where
the birds get
melodies, their strange rhythms
tinkling or rubbing cardboard.
the dark bottle looking
right back, eyes
flickerings or uncharged
batteries. the
water.
asking between colorshades
were
reflects in its own color onto
walls and the nearby desk
surface, papers
other, some important
so much,
paintings and
from an
laser jet printer, whatever
meaning.
we ask ourselves some
question we can't hear, muffled
because our heads are
underwater, this cold sensation
pressing on our foreheads while
we feel our socks becoming
heavy, cottonfibers grabbing
skin and dragging behind our
feet, cold passing between
our toes. maroon painted
walls
crinkling plastic bag full of
snacks. we notice it is becoming
later every moment, and that
as soon as we count one
number there is another in
front of that, always room for
another one or zero or eighty
seven or pencilcase
dirtyshoe, these power outlets
rusting over even though we
can't see where the water
could have come from
the carpet telling which
way people walk most
without asking why they walk it
so often when it seems
there are so, so many other
ways to go and that this way
isn't even the easiest or most
efficient or beautiful or
surprising: they are taking the
because it is the path they take,
and we can't help but
laughalittle at how beautiful that is
not to say that one is better
than another or that
is wrong for going the way
they do or that we think we are
better than going that
particular way to the couch, but
that we know in the end we are
going to go that way too and
that's just fine. it's just as
good an option as any so we
don't see a reason why not
beautiful enough and it's
surprising enough
may be the most beautiful
and surprising thing of all
at the moment.
happens are,,
sometimes sometimes things are
not
without even
things it happens that
they are
without even trying
other to the
things
okay, and they are okay
sometimes they
sometimes that sometimes things
even trying sometimes
things are not okay
one to
okay, it happens. and
sometimes
without and
are sometimes they go go
from one to to the other.
things they that
sometimes, and
are from even not okay go
are
sometimes things are sometimes
sometimes things happens are that
one even
okay
without even even even and
trying. and sometimes things
are trying.. sometimes it.
things
the
sometimes to
accurate aren't
repetition getting a little
getting a little fewer mistakes
. the conversation going
on to on outside going and a
little faster, faster and with
. the on to pretend
listening pretend we.
mistakes. the conversation
going with. the conversation
faster repetition. every
listening do we aren't we heated
outside while we do the becoming
heated while the
heated aren't listening. a
accurate and
getting a every little getting.
every do our while we do heated
while becoming heated while
we do our best to pretend
listening. our best to pretend we
to pretend we
our we. every repetition
ideas permeating while
while happens
squares making the geometries
and relationships
dominoes which
pushing buttons buttons and and
direction. not we expected not the
expected or intended..
interactions. spray paints and and
concrete and ideas permeating
with a smile. it all just
other things squares and
themselves relationships pushing
pushing
dominoes which
seem going the way could be
the point maybe point.
could intended could, but
maybe that
the smell of
from outside. a slowmoving
sound. we notice how
everything is so
remember why, but for now we
don't. “can
for a while?”
with the sunlight and
throughs the the
continues continues again.
stops nowing
circles circles of stops
time continues and stops and
circles of ink stops close close
noticed we wonder this
nowing arounds and time
continues and
continues the now nowing
circles continues continues of
continues continues a few few
minutes minutes and ask
beautiful us wonder we wait
around through the of move
watch
if beautiful
noticed and air just sort
through the air just nobody
noticed the wonder if nobody "is
"is this beautiful ?" ask
okay ?" ?" ask
sort of breath. warmer
again arounds behindingly
the now
time continues eyes
few "is this this beautiful
?" to watch the. we move
around through the and
behindingly
sunlight and and feel another
through
warmer. sunlight
breath
throughs and
sunlight and we
we. the our eyes if it would
this
would would this beautiful
we
agains
we or to while behind the
eyelids, and underthere, a
beforemaroon, the eyes again with
questions and ideas
under a color when we
inside it
moving so slowly but the clock
seems to be working as usual
with those clunks and little
fingers and woodenbits
suggest a counterpoint. and the
conversation stays the same and
nobody really seems to care
about the wind.
sounds
try not not
not
while. all
crackling again
and make
windchimes and we
buzzing
making
feel us
warmer but
okay
slantingway thing
another
not outside
making this kind
against we pause
,
longer
voices
our chests chests
making
our
hear
and breathe
thisthat while.
thisthat
ticking by
making
the voices make this the
chests and
while
seasonal
feel
and just like that, the
page turns for us. the next
series of random numbers fill
the screen and we begin to
imagine dots and we begin to
connect them and agree and
disagree with them, relate to
them and question them and
share them. the page glares.
we glare. everybody is
glaring and nobody is laughing
and then one of us starts
laughing, and another one of us
starts laughing, and we
laughing and the paper is
laughing and the inkdots are
laughing: the numbers are
laughing too.
cue of these colors
whose names remember
lines and
and
remember. many lines we lines. we
we in becoming our lungs
we our our lungs
forget isn't it funny
isn't it laughing! funny but
the the but smile right on
remember
incense is still somehow
becoming our
breathe. forget breathe and we
breathe and forget to questions
.. forget breathe. isn't
it funny
it's hard to speak
sometimes. we are frustrated with
ourselves for our
inconsistencies
allowing things to be just the way
they are and want to be,
always taking action and never
taking
once again wishing things
were a different way or that
the coin had
other face; we can't figure
out who we are, and we aren't
quite sure if that question
leads anywhere
the energy to say anything,
too many
behind each option which
seem to go anywhere
positive, anywhere that doesn't
hurt anybody or dissipate
into the grass as if nothing
had happened in the first
place and we begin to wonder if
anything actually did or does
happen or if we had somehow
thought it
of desperation and
confusion aimed
particular,
forth but never quite the same
way, always surprising
somehow
confusion and
place, the feeling that we are
nowhere
are getting nowhere.
silence and quiet now. a
small voice humming
laughing in the other room. a
crystal or some melting snow.
behinds toward while again
around where's or why's while
leftandright shrinking silently. a
wooden creak. a scratch. all
centers
around, things just happening
and just being the way they
are. and we realize that this
is a beautiful thing. that
this is a
in us for it every person
and object is doing air
these staring turning away,
being and transformed into
some energy which pushes
bits of wood how their if in
will all of a joke without
punchline sentence. these bricks
clinging to rock glue the and
facts the violins
our going hear muffled but
every, landing on this the and
for a moment
care. we
because about us more happy feel
more is laughing on our just
going
and around us, what
of around. these without
absorbed into some which pushes
wonder why of and cars their
wonder if in will of these
bricks to another opinions and
facts, the the, paints keep
our best pretending on
themselves and we can't but notice
all how the sun is on piece of
paper on our
things are themselves don't
care caring about that would
never have is our our skin
going trees around in us for
the around us in away, the
and transformed of bits of
dust why how climb. we wonder
if in turn to be part of a
joke without without a last
sentence clinging to one falling
into the screams and the hugs
, we doing notice. of room
notice the us, how the sun
this piece whole room
glowing somehow skin and
themselves or
human, sun is laughing on arm
our music keeps going
around a little we keep see
everything around us for what doing
, sort of moves. these
eyes turning away, and
kinetic of dust why wood is and in
the turn to be story rock
glue
hugs timer circles
themselves while we can't every all
our and for moment
we are not and that's
perfectly okay would never have
made us more happy or, more on
glowing and the music just keeps
, the wind pushing around
and instant see is, is the
eyes without turning away,
transformed some bits of us resonant
trees of wonder will a
sentence another with, the the
the, paints and doing. on
room and notice the all is
piece paper
make us happy, what would
make this headache go away
from everything going on
scratching pens and observations,
a quote out of
leave the incense burning
when we go
though we know it's a fire
hazard and it puts our
danger
other people
below us,
we know and the
care about what
even though we never asked
them to. we wonder why
should
happens to
we care. and everything is
we suspect
just happen somehow and we
can't help
and then laugh at
the
like if someone were to
listen (we suspect
and if they were
write things down
listened.
about scheduling and books
worrying) about what might be for
breakfast
another when we are
without any particular sense
intention to begin with, just
going across
straight
bounces through
going with