Childhood
I should have known it at the time
That when I breathed my first on earth
I was the youngest person then alive;
The world entire senior to me was,
And infinitely wiser than me was:
I couldn't know it at the time.
It's simply mathematical
(Or calculussing
algebraically)
That somewhere in the milliseconds next
Became my heart the second-youngest heart
And so the world became a moving place
As seniors died and
juniors birthed.
But this is all beside the point.
I'm here to talk about a pile of dirt.
I'm here to think about what's meaningful.
A cone of dirt in a
construction site.
It smelled like greasy worms and foul
roots.
It was an afternoon of joy.
But it was later than I'd thought
(Oh isn't that forever how it is?)
I heard a angry
shouting of my name:
For I was late, quite late, of dinner time,
And I'd been sought by all my family:
We all were punished by our Dad.
These days there's more below my age
Than elder to my age, and nothing much
Makes sense beyond that pile of housing
dirt,
That
Its tastiness I can't forget.
***
What got into
me? Do men really work this way? or was my
psychological mathematics simply naïve?
I don't even
remember her name. Twenty-five years ago....
I even chose
the restaurant. I had a new job, and I met her at the job. So we went to a nice
place, not a pub, a real restaurant.
The entrées
were twenty bucks apiece, and she was drinking wine and I was drinking Belgian
beer. I wish I could say I had a good time, but I don't think I did. I was too
nervous through it all.
We had dessert,
then she said she wanted some more wine. Since I was
on my third beer, I ordered up the most expensive bottle.
By the time it
came we weren't able to drink much of it. Just a half glass apiece. Then I
asked for the bill, which came to $2100 thereabouts.
Sure enough,
the wine was their most expensive bottle.
I didn't let
her see how much it was. (She quit her job a week later.) I paid the bill with
my new credit card.
I pilfered the
bottle.
She went her
way.
Walking home, I
drank $1500 worth of wine.
***
Two seminal
television shows from 1972. Both available on syndication.
In the
The first aired
at
Next, at
eight-thirty, we had something that wasn't a comedy. More a moody thing, lots
of meaningful glances, none of the characters had names, nothing followed
anything, ran for years and years. Took place in sewers and chambers. Some
torture scenes. No-one ever talked about the show, but we all had dreams of it,
and we talked about the dreams rather than the show. The dreams became
collaborative novels. Densely plotted, surprising juxtapositions, irony,
references to classical literature, humour, new hypotheses, labyrinths of
glass....
***
He said,
"It's just something I got into the habit of doing. It ruined my career as
a surgeon."
I said,
"That's too bad. What was it like?"
"I just
hated inefficiency. I hated waste. If I saw something unnecessary, I got
rid of it."
"How did
it start?"
"Started with my toes.
It's that fourth one, the ring toe as it's called. They weren't helping me. So
I cut them off.
"Ouch."
"I used
anaesthesia. Then my ring fingers. Completely
useless. Got in the way."
"No
clarinet for you."
"No, no
clarinet. I'm entirely unmusical. Pinkie fingers and toes.
That's when I lost my job."
"Oops."
"I didn't
care. So off went my toes, off went two more fingers."
"And you
just got used to it all."
"It's easy
to adapt. Women shunned me, so I had no need for a member. Off it went."
"Interesting."
"A lot of
the ear is useless, you know?. So, chop, chop. Same
with the nose: 20% useless."
"Off they
went."
"My feet:
I had nowhere to go."
"Legs will
be next."
He said,
"So, whenever I saw anything useless I cut it off."
I said,
"You should have started with your head."
***
7 June Anno Domini 1687
Whilst working
upon the Principia proofs, there came
a knock at my door. "Come," I cried, but no-one came. I went forth to
the door and opened it. Nobody there ... except my favourite rabbit Snuggles
with its throat slit upon my vestibule. I wept mightily: who could my
tormenters be?
8 June Anno Domini 1687
A riddle
solved! The
9 June Anno Domini 1687
Storm
tonight--but not storm enough to cause an infinite pit below my writing desk!
Where did it come from? Who are my tormenters? I covered it with boards. Surely
a phenomena deserving of further inquiry, once I have finished my physicks volume. Oh labours!
10 June Anno Domini 1687
The note reads,
"Back off, buster. You've been warned." What is a 'buster'?
11 June Anno Domini 1687
Another note. Signature: Quantum. I wonder who this character is.
But: I cannot be stopped in my researches!
No comments:
Post a Comment