IJ study archive

the aesthetics of the buzz

quote

A somehow deliciously symmetrical buzz: the mind floats easy in the exact center of a brain that floats cushioned in a warm skull that itself sits perfectly centered on a cushion of soft air some neckless distance above the shoulders, and inside all is a somnolent hum.

Context

The seduction rendered so precisely it becomes its own argument for the danger: not a lurid high but a deliciously symmetrical calm, the self nested in concentric cushioned circles, pain demoted to a distant news-item, sleep like wax. This is what the refusal is refusing — not squalor but perfect centered peace — and the entry earns its place by making the reader feel exactly why the thing is so hard to say no to.

In anthology