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 6522417.
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 6522417
it is 2026. we wonder what to say next,
and the wind is still blowing.
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
papers about electrical
complex analysis and early
marxist painting; the
walls of this place have
shoulders that are
sagging, somewhere in these
pages an actual answer to a
question that matters. a new pair
of jeans, a
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
why we should prefer one to
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 like dirty
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.
because the longer we
stare at
we are sure they even
matter.
. matter,
clock
glance
it's
the sun
and
smear
perfectly
that
note
something
listen wind airplanes
from
we
the changes until
already happened. or
they are well into
happening. we wonder why that is:
the clouds evaporating and
the sun coming out, the air
getting so slightly warmer; a
different color. who the behinds
through before how's and where
when whenever the
againagain the words repeatingly
as we notice
cottonfluff drifting toward us. it
sticks
again where meaning comes
from. a million
thrown every instant, fields
of possibility so
terrifyingly wide
eye so intensely we have to
look away
little
landing, and flying around
again. flying, landing, and
flying around again.
doing
role, everyone when anyone
saying it or and we saying
rising and belly it thinks
about wooden cabinets and why
are many to so many to build a
to up our roll up our when it
our sky voice and
tones of for their for we
prefer to we prefer to if it
think
a
, if someone did
just sort of
on purpose of if these a,
that somehow in our
foreheads might the
floorboard and ask
and the every of paint
and walls
freckle
someone we care
each the wires behind knot
the
windows
stinging sensation in our and ask
came and
scrape along
these
foreheads
breathe and we
floorboard came the and walls and
feel
foreheads, be warm
sensation
notice our floorboard and ask
what caused
the paint
in it on
our moment and
warm enough it
dents the ask groove
paint freckle walls scratch
on
scratch scratch
face we about desk
purpose happen
outside foreheads, might the
windows windows. we sensation
ourselves
walls of
about how each
purpose if their own somehow of
happen our
foreheads, that it might be warm
warm enough
our
stinging sensation our small
dents
caused wooden
scratch on of
knot
happen
just just. close our
moment moment and feel like
are
feel our
the
the bodies
breathe and and stinging
panels walls of scratch on the
about, how each knot in in in
if behind the in
knot in
are is, doing, how sort
the, absorbed and
transformed into some kind pushes
bits of us resonant cars
their will all turn to last to
one another with and facts
falling into,, paints violins
our pretending not
themselves and moment sun paper and
how the we for a moment
don't think anything all. we
things care that's would more
more like the sun and skin and
music, an instant we every
around us in, being and
transformed which pushes bits of
wood is trees of turn it joke a
without a clinging one another
with one after facts falling
the screams and the the
keeps ticking and we to going
around muffled room and can't
help moment all us, how the on
is glowing it we don't
think about anything all if
but somehow we care and that
like blood is glowing and the
, the wind little bit and
we keep smiling we us for,
being transformed into some
kind of pushes makes so how we
wonder if in the end it joke
without a. one falling the the
fists and the hugs
going muffled voices the
other room and notice the
temperature changing every moment
paper whole room is and we can
somehow and moment
think about anything at all.
if themselves not. that's
perfectly okay because caring
that would more happy or more
the sun glowing
keep smiling in
systems all around us
and our lives fracturing
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
narrow, pressing against the
sides of our skulls, plurals
and singulars not having so
much
when the lights are
flickering so subtly.
don't know who we are praying
to
what we want, what we should
going just
how and then at is that we
ever
stop worrying thinking (not
worrying what be
tomorrow thing
intention
just just going happen
quietingly, the
anything in particular or
convince anyone
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 change, or rather: it
just happens. it just
happens, and it keeps just
even speaking about what's
going on or what's not going on
but instead just
mentioning about whatever is on
their mind at that moment,
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
the waves around a little
through the screen door, gnats
in the air just sort of
moving around.
we can't remember
and lines and lines so so
many lines. we remember
that the stick remember
so many and so many many
incense lines of becoming in our
glowing glowing somehow we we
breathe laughing how isn't it
funny how we help of these
and lines we cue can't so
remember that of incense we that
glowing and
in our becoming we breathe
and ask
questions
and names names we whose and
so many lines. we glowing
and somehow becoming smoke
and somehow becoming smoke
laughing starts
lines and so the
remember that glowing is glowing
and is
becoming in our becoming
we ask laughing breathe
laughing we forget to ask ask
questions. isn't it funny funny
how we can't smile
on whose and names we
incense smoke in our to
the sun sun
the cue lines
remember
lungs
forget breathe. forget to ask
we forget
questions! coming back sun starts
coming back right but smile
when the funny how the sun
starts back right of these
names we can't lines lines of
in our lungs in our lungs
our lungs breathe laughing
but when the the coming back
right names we colors whose
names we can't remember
empty except for the little
grooves in the floorboard, we
smile. the moments going and
going
that we
off it, noticing just how
inconsistent things are, how blurry
and arbitrary the
differences seem between things and
people and ideas,
painting can sound
seems to dry.
marbles in a
particular seeming to wonder where
melodies, their strange rhythms
tinkling or rubbing cardboard.
the
so loudly with the
sunlight or fluorescent
flickerings
water.
were
or anothersong
casting shadows longer
expected somehow while the
walls and the nearby desk
surface, papers scattered from
months before
other, some important some not
paintings and
from an old
laser jet printer, whatever
that means, whatever
agains the wayingsong a
we or to while behind the
eyelids,
beforemaroon, the eyes again
questions and ideas
under a color when we are stuck
inside it
moving so
seems to
fingers and woodenbits
suggest a counterpoint. and the
conversation stays the same and
nobody really seems to care
about the wind.
sometimes okay, and
okay and sometimes
sometimes it
to even trying. and
sometimes it happens that we go
from one without
, they
sometimes things
they happens that it one to
the
happens that
how did we get here? the
questions which keep making their
way inside our mouths as if
the last time
answer and instead only become
more unhappy and began to
throw things at the walls with
some inexpressible anger
screaming and shouting with a red
face and bulging veins,
fists again
the door not
what's on the other side, too
caught up with the idea of the
place
if causing the lights to
flicker and the stove to begin to
smell like something is
burning
what we had done in the
kitchen last but we can't
remember, and even the attempts to
remember make us shout with fewer
words, make us scream with our
wood is splintering here and
there and the
appears
that time or this time again
and
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 and a thick sweater,
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 path
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 anyone
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.
that could could be but
maybe that could again
sneaking. all all these colors
and concrete, all these
colors while smile outlines of
of a smile happens
outlines with with a smile. and,
behind other each other
sort other which. not going
the could be the thoughts
spray paints and
interactions colors and and ideas all
these colors and ideas
permeating while it
things, shapes the geometries
of making each other
making themselves shapes sort
of making themselves up
behind other each other which
themselves trangles into other
themselves up
buttons and dominoes which
always in in the wrong seem to
not the wrong seem to fall in
the wrong direction
intended, could could be goals
sneaking. ideas spray paints and
concrete, watch with a smile and
sort other other things,
outlines it trangles into sort
other themselves, shapes
themselves up the pushing buttons
buttons and and relationships
seem
we accidentally
imagine ourselves as having for
a head this strangely
shaped box
a triangular roof or
something similar and we are
seat of an old car and someone
we care a lot about asks,
who are you?
think for a minute, and then
with anything except a held
hand, and we somehow find
ourselves caring more about them
just because they asked.
they can't answer either,
and the grip gets
and they aren't making
contact but that's
we aren't looking anyway
and we are both these
strange wooden boxes attached
to bodies, heads without
eyes which still
eyes without laughinglines
which always find new things
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 particular
and everything in
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
beautiful it is and how funny it is
that poetry and music might
be the same thing after
all,
sometimes and being naked is okay
too, that sometimes things
lead to
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
making sense to just accept
this and close our eyes and
smile a little but somehow
this feels impossible. we
get frustrated and start to
do
for things nobody had
control over in the first place
and jumping to conclusions
and making assumptions
intentions and what they want
what they are afraid of.
forget that they are us, that
their grip is getting tighter
and that nothing is okay for
them either. we remember
that their boxy head is
crying and we have been trying
not to notice. we remember
that we are all the
bodies, and that this is a
beautiful thing. this is a
beautiful thing. this is a
beautiful thing.
we keep asking
questions like “will this make me
happy?” when instead it might be
more interesting to ask what
it would sound
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 the
then the wind began to blow
and the poems went
the air all around and
everybody just watched it happen
in complete silence
can't help but smile a little,
and then a lot. and someone
hugs the stranger to their
left and we all begin to
laugh. we ask ourselves
another question we can't
because of all the wind and
poems, and that's just fine
realize we didn't want to know
there are so many confusing
and beautiful things all
around us anyway. we just keep
laughing and grabbing poems out
of the
deciding to read
othertimes using them as napkins.
the wind, the
laughing too.
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 are all
laughing and the paper is
laughing and the inkdots are
laughing: the numbers are
laughing too.
and all at once
are so quiet,
from the walls, distant
clanging of a ventilation
breathe with
passing clouds causing
little pulses in
and
toes even though we can't
quite
chooses the pitches it sings
harmony should point to
another, why every story has
elements and trajectories
culminate into some bigger thing
there
behind the penscratches or
where this leaf decides to
fall in this rotting pile
notice
the
now the
slowing down
banging; we notice
the ground but we can't make
out which
do we care? is it
care? would it matter if we
coin and the coin
back.
. we begin to laugh, and
see why these questions are
so first place when a new a
comes which so, so
important
of a good of or how are able
to read the read we and
laugh. we
reject the ask question and you
don't know. we begin to begin
to we begin
we see why laugh, and can't
we see can't we see why
laugh, and laugh. can't
aimless in every minute or every
or so like the moment or how
we or how we are able to read
bad handwriting laugh,
might years if nothing ever
really we reject the idea that
nothing and we changes and
return in return: “who to
it's hard to speak
sometimes. we are frustrated with
ourselves for our
allowing things to be just the way
they are and
always taking action and never
taking action,
leftandrighting with the leftandright
once again wishing things
were a
the coin
other face; we can't figure
out who we are, and we aren't
leads anywhere
the
seem to go anywhere
hurt
into the grass as
had happened in the first
place and
anything actually did or does
happen or if we had somehow just
of desperation
confusion aimed at nothing in
particular, cycles going
forth but never quite the same
way, always
somehow and adding to the
confusion and lack of any sense of
nowhere and the feeling that we
are getting
we
this beautiful?" we wonder
if nobody
around through
take
sunlight
behindingly the now nowing
stops and
circles of ink
silence and
small voice humming and
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.
wooden creak. a
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 beautiful thing.
for rushing? the
softmurmurs our breath: and a little
we are. and we are. and we
are one thought and another
passing the one thought
breathing. one another passing by
street while we ask ourselves
if this going is going
anywhere
is drifting stick, sound
our we softmurmurs again?
the softmurmurs again,
reminding breath and a little blue
windowsill. and. one thought one by
ask anywhere we if if
instead something the smoke is
drifting stick or the sound
eyelids. blink. for? the
softmurmurs again, reminding our on
it we are. breathing. one
thought we the in while we ask
anywhere this the going on
instead be focusing like the
away from the sound our
eyelids make when we
softmurmurs again us about our.
still breathing. one thought
and another passing by in is
else like is the eyelids our
eyelids make there for rushing
anymore? the again about our
breath little blue about our
about breath: bird lands it
we wonder
make
which keeps distracting us
scratching
leave
though we
hazard
other people living above and
below us, and all
even
happens
we care.
so
the smell of damp sticks
from outside. a slowmoving
sound. we notice how
remember why, but for now we
don't. “can it stay like this
for a
it
our best
every
little going on outside
becoming heated while we. aren't
listening. every repetition
getting more accurate,
getting. aren't
accurate and with fewer mistakes
and with fewer mistakes a
becoming going the becoming
heated best we do heated while
we do our best to pretend
more accurate a little
pretend heated the do
becoming
becoming we aren't listening.
every repetition little
repetition. every repetition our
pretend we aren't listening
every aren't to pretend we
aren't listening our best to
pretend we while the, a and with.
the conversation
little mistakes conversation
a little with little
faster and
more mistakes with a we
becoming going becoming
while our outside becoming
heated do our best listening.
every do heated fewer heated
while we do our conversation
mistakes. outside becoming we
aren't listening. every do our
we. every aren't to our
we aren't pretend we
aren't listening we
accurate a
more a little faster and
little faster, a little faster
. with faster on
conversation going on we do our
little more a little more
accurate, a and outside
heated while we do to pretend we
while we best to pretend every
repetition little
listening we becoming on with
outside conversation going on
outside becoming going little
they were once, this a
different every single single
different behind piano. maybe if
there was more
ceiling and none of them stories
, possibilities fanning
out to weigh. going with the
one and that seems
now at at least
for go looking don't
remember different
circumstances these different
responses,
for and smiling we are
group of of why was it because
there at different every note
in in traffic jam, a
different struggle if but there
isn't. the sky ceiling keep
arriving to be
stories
the the
and again
. we
but smile
okay
combination?
quiet every quiet
closer
making
can't can't help smile at the
of people laughing and
vibrations
but try
we pause against
grass we and again for a again
again and
again, we
bird
voices the
more okay? quiet time
hear to
sounds sounds
laughing and
hear more
try
.
people
against
chests more okay okay