Modern Themes in Antiquity[1]
Given
the choice, I chose to be thrown out of an airplane.
We
attained 10,000 feet. My guards had already unbounded me, knowing I was a
cheery fellow not given to monkey business. They opened the door for me. I
nodded in thanks. "Cheerio, fellows!" I cried as I stepped out into
the high empty air.
Getting
up to speed was the sickening part. It seemed parts of me wanted to drop faster
than other parts of me, subjectively disregarding what Galileo at
I
prepared myself for the final approach. The fields below were spring-grey and
summer-green. I said to myself, "This fun is nearly at an end," and
positioned myself supinely. The plane seemed not to have moved. I watched the
fluffy clouds get further and further away. I spread my arms and legs wide. I
felt I had been created just for this occasion. Then it all came to a sudden
end. But what an ending!
*
"What
part of childhood do you miss the most?"
"Are
you aiming for some kind of innocence and experience thing?"
"Not
at all."
"Because
usually when people ask that question, it's an innocence and experience
question?"
"Say
what you want."
"If
you're sincere: I miss not having old friends."
"That's
something strange to miss."
"Think
of it: everyone in your life is more-or-less new to you. There's no-one to remember
your past. No-one to remind you how old you are. No one to look old, thereby
reminding you of how old you must look and be."
"Is
that all you miss?"
"Isn't
it enough? Every day there was something new and there were no reminders of how
things use to be because there wasn't any used to be. And this is something
that's lost so slowly you can't know when you stopped not having old friends.
It's a terrible thing to lose, so slowly like that. It's shocking to have known
someone for twenty years. I wish I could get amnesia just so I could start
again."
"That's
a lot to say, you know."
"So
tell me, what part of childhood do you
miss?"
"Being
able to read without glasses."
*
Three
pilgrims have come to my land. Over a light meal of thunderberries
and cream, they asked me what places they should seek out. They had limited
time, and a limited budget; they referred to both as 'per diems'.
I
told them: "There is a hill, an hour away by foot, from which you can see
the lands that adjoin mine. I made the trek twelve years ago, and I was
mightily delighted."
I
told them: "The earth of my land is rich and powerful. Dig wherever you
like, and I guarantee that within two hours you will have a marvel suitable as
an heirloom or suitable for framing."
I
told them: "South of here, down the highway some forty clicks, there is a
lovely tree. It is an oak."
I
told them: "We have a town here in which the dogs run city hall. Most
ordinances concern bones, but some show an advanced appreciation for the fine
arts, especially dance."
The
pilgrims thanked me for the advice. Next evening, over thunderberries
and cream, they told me they had gone to see the oak tree and come away
enlightened. Will they come again? For the hill, the earth, the dogs?
*
I'm
slurping up some delicious lake water that tastes like moss and fish and frogs.
I catch sight of something and look quick! It's a bird swimming or something.
I've never bothered with birds much. I'm more of a squirrel cockapoo.
So I ignore this bird and the bird swims or whatever past me and I'm done with
the drinking and I know there's things to smell and people to smell.
Time's
a-wastin' so I run up the hill over the rocks and
boards to my food bowl in which there's nothing but smells of meals past. I
catch sight of something and look quick! What the hell it's like a squirrel
only really small and brown. I run at it and it disappears! Down a hole! I
smell the hole and I can't figure out what it the thing was. What a puzzle!
I
hear her voice; she's less than a mile away. Time to jump up and down and run
in circles and roll around in dirt. A couple minutes she comes into view and
I'm all revved up and I run to her and jump up and down on her and tell her
about the squirrel-like things.
*
Three
pilgrims have come to my land. Over a light meal of thunderberries
and cream, they asked me: "What is the way? How should we best navigate
your strange and marvellous land?" I pulled out our visitors' guide.
"This will help you." I gave sections A, B, and C to pilgrims 1, 2,
and 3 respectively.
"You
each now have access to one or more of three more or less dimensions. I believe
one of you has the key to the sites, or perhaps a working version."
They
sifted through their sections seriously.
I
continued: "You should have no difficulty keying each site onto the
co-ordinates. We believe in teamwork in my land. Use the guides in any order,
for you can't go wrong. All is equal in my land, and the journey is half or
more of the fun."
Eight
days later they returned. "We couldn't make head nor tail of these guidebooks.
We wound up in the middle of nowhere, wandering, every time. So we tried to get
back here, and that took five days to do. We're tired, we're hungry, and on the
verge of being insane."
I
smiled. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. Please, come again."
*
Y10K
Harry
stirs his Tom Collins with a plastic swizzle stick. The music is up loud;
everyone's dancing. He goes to the hi-fi and turns it down. "Okay
everyone!" he shouts. "It's almost
Joanie laughs and spilled her highball.
"Oh, shit, where's the champagne?"
There's
a mad rush on Billy's behalf to run down to the cooler to get the two bottles
of bubbly. When he returns there's five minutes left. He gives a bottle to
Maggie.
"Never
thought we'd see the end of it!"
They
turn on the Sony Trinitron and tune to 7 to see
Everyone
gives good kisses or better kisses to everyone.
"Whew!"
cries Nance. "I feel drugged!"
"I'm
never up this late."
Harry
sits down, suddenly sickly. "What was in the mousse?" He vomits blood
and June jumps.
Abigail
rubs her forehead; blood and flesh comes off. "What the fuck?"
Joanie falls down and pulls at her stomach;
her intestines spill out.
The
other guests fall, and dissolve into goo.
And
everything is suddenly silent, all over the universe.
*
I
say to her: "So, the universe. It's expanding. That's to say, the stars in
the sky are tinted a bit red which means they are all travelling away from us,
in every direction."
She
stirred her coffee.
I
continued: "But the principle of universality means that it can't be
happening out there and not everywhere. So things must be expanding here, right
now, but we're mostly, in most normal cases, see, not aware of it."
She
looked out the window.
I
continued: So we have to all draw together, get closer, to see where the
expansion is happening. Because then we'll have a greater mass being close
together. That's to say we can experience,
feel, the expansion of the universe."
She
stirred her coffee some more.
I
continued: "But you ask, so, what will this do for us? The universe is
expanding; we'll know it's expanding; then what? Well, the answer is that
there's a great deal of pleasure in knowledge. We get together, see the
expanding universe, and we'll finally understand really what it's all about.
We'll be in communion with all creation."
She
smiled and said: "Not until I'm married."[2]
*
There's
always a second chance to begin again. God is merciful. And if that second
re-beginning doesn't quite suit you, there'll be a third chance and even a
fourth chance. Believe me. You blew it on the weekend, didn't you, when you
chose to see Troubles Yesterday
instead of Sunny Smiles? You can
change that easily. (The 'fourth dimension' isn't a dimension at all; it's not
90° away from the other three, now is it?) You should take that chance, and see
Sunny Smiles instead. It's most
easily done.
Now
that you've seen Sunny Smiles, tell
me: Did you like the ending? You didn't? She should have ended up with the
other cousin? Then begin again. Go back, go back to your childhood, and do
things differently. Eventually you'll find yourself seeing Sunny Smiles wherein she ends up with the other cousin. God is
merciful.
Everything
is mutable: that's something they don't teach you in school. If you find the
right way, turning lead to gold is most easily done. Make your life perfect.
Take my advice. Create your own path. Experiment with all the possibilities.
Don't be afraid. There is no done that cannot be undone. God is merciful.
*
I
remember growing up. I lived in the suburbs with my parents and my sister and
my brother. I fit into this environment nicely. I went to public school and I went
to high school. I then left home to go to university for an engineering degree.
I
excelled at my studies and I was hired right away. I found myself a girlfriend
who became my wife. I rose to the top of my profession. I helped my wife raise
a son and then a daughter.
I
had plenty of friends and they would come over on weekends, sometimes with
their kids and sometimes not. I knew how to handle my liquor.
I
watched my kids grow up. I helped them pay for college, a little. I saw them
become adults just as I had. I went to their weddings and I was at the hospital
when my grandchildren were born.
I
knew it was time to relax. I'd worked so hard. I took my wife on five cruises
over ten years. I got very old suddenly. I saw my wife and children gather
around my deathbed.
I
died. I didn't close my eyes. I had never opened them, see?
*
The
open fire's flames caused to dance the stick figures on the walls of the cave.
Okay,
enough scene-setting.
The
Ephebe said: "Oh Master, teach us the secret of
snobbery."
The
Neophyte added: "Teach us, and we shall catch fish."
The
Master rolled his eyes. He sighed. He checked his fingernails. He sighed again.
He checked his fingernails again. Then he spoke.
"What's
your big interest in that? Aren't there better
things to be interested in?"
The
Ephebe and the Neophyte blushed in shame. The Ephebe said: "We are trying to understand things.
That's all!"
The
Master smiled condescendingly. "I am a teacher by example. Observe. You
expressed an interest in something, and I made it plain that you were
interested in a thing that was of no interest whatsoever. That is the secret of
snobbery."
The
Neophyte said: "You are truly the master."
"In
summary, anyone can be a snob simply by exhibiting a disinterest in anything
anyone else is interested in. You do not have to be of any social class. Simply
dismiss another's interests, and you will appear immeasurably superior."
The
Ephebe and the Neophyte nodded and looked to the
dancing figures.
"Oh,
those," said the Master.
*
Whither Prussianism?
We
had the perfect organizational chart. At bottom, each team reported to two
other teams depending on the day of the week. Meetings were set for early
morning, late morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon. With eight teams
(and Wednesdays free) every team on that tier was responding to all other teams
once a week. There was no team outside the loop, as it were.
Above
these teams we had four senior teams. They would meet with the lower teams
mid-mornings and mid-afternoons on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays,
in a set weekly rotation pattern. Progress reports had to be filled out in octoplicate with wide margins for asterisks, arrows, pilcrows, and exclamation marks only.
The
asterisks, arrows, pilcrows, and exclamation marks
would be quantified and check-summed for the two management teams to peruse in
early-mid-morning, mid-late-morning, early-mid-afternoon, and
mid-late-afternoon. These analyses would move up and down the chain in
simultaneity.
It
was a perfect organizational chart. Everyone knew everything across the
organization. The chart was the glory of our organization. We had made the
chart perfectly, with the human factor entirely eliminated. The organization
was entirely amoral, and we set to work then deciding what to do.
*
"I'd
like to get your names and ranks right before we begin." My pen felt
awkward.
In
a clear and serious voice, the man with the beard gave his name.
"Okay,
so," I said. "That's R-I-G‑"
"No,
not quite." He spelled it out. I had a consonant and a vowel wrong. I tried
again, going letter-by-letter.
"Close
but no cigar." He spelled again.
The
paper and pen looked all blurry. "Okay, got it," I said, even though
I didn't. "And what was your rank on D-Day?"
He
told me.
"So,
Corporal."
"No,
I wasn't Corporal." He told me again. I repeated what he'd said and was
wrong again.
"Got
it," I said. "It was quite
a long time ago."
"Not
to us," said the one who had no beard.
"Okay,
so, you. I have to have your name and rank. The newspaper's quite keen on these
things."
He
told me his name and I wrote it down letter-by-letter. "V-Y-L‑"
"There's
no L." He told me what went there.
"V-E-R‑"
"Listen."
We went through it slowly. I pretended.
"Great.
So. What was your rank on D-Day?"
He
told me.
"Sergeant
Major."
"No,
that's wrong."
"Right.
I'm wrong."
My
pen, my paper.
*
Just Dogs
Dogs
have trained us very well.
I
look online for dog-related businesses in
Dogfather & Co
Bark 'N' Scratch
Best Paw Forward
Hollywoof
Hot Diggity
Dog
Groomingdales
Doggy Style
Happy Tails
Cosmopawlitan
Barkyard
Bone Appetit
Wags to Riches
Woof Pack Adventures
and
I could go on and on.
The
point(er) is that we must have some specially-bred
parts in our hearts for these creatures.
Even though they are all possessed of dog-breath,
we let them lick. They make short work of plush toys and furniture. They knock
vases to break them on hardwood floors.
And
yet they're slowly taking over the world.
They're
not capable of tragedy. We don't consider them capable of deep tragic feelings
(aside from the tales of dogs at graves forever, but even that's not tragic).
All
they want is food. If you provide them with food, you are the superior dog
(though a bit funny looking). They'll follow you anywhere.
In
James Agee's sharecropper book, dogs are fed but cats are not.
We
and our world would be quite different without dogs.
Just
think, and you smile.
There's
something about dogs that attracts both fleas and puns.
*
Dear
diary,
I
stopped the car at the street outside *his* house to calm down. I was very wet. I had some extra panties with
me, so I changed them, right there in
the car!
*He*
met me at the door. I stammered, "Oh, hi, I'm here from the newspaper, to
interview you!" I was clenching my thighs!
We
settled ourselves down at a table in the backyard. Oh God!
"So!"
I kinda shouted. "Ten and a half MILLION
dollars!"
*He*
smiled dreamily. "That's the amount, I've been told."
"So!
Whaddaya gonna go with
it?"
*He*
pondered. "At the very least, I'm going to buy $5,000,000 worth of I.E.D.s and send them off to my Afghan friends."
"Ooh!"
"Yeah.
I feel I should 'give back' to the community."
"That's
so.... That's so sweet! Everything
Heather Mallick says about you is true!"
He
smiled again. Oooooooooooooooh!
A
fly had landed on the table. *He* hovered *his* hand over the fly, and, with a
quick swipe, *he* caught it!
"Now
watch this."
*He*
somehow got the fly by its legs, and with *his* other fingers *he* deftly
pulled both wings off the nasty thing that so
much reminded me of my father!!!
*
The
Bala Bay Inn is effectively no more, due to its sale
to Marriott in late winter. I'd heard the news from a friend, so I checked
their website ... which is dead, with links removed. We had to wait to find out
more.
This
is not a happy story.
The
cab driver told us the Marriotts were going to fix
the place up. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
A
woman at Bala Falls Pub told us what had really been
done.
"It's
full of the people who work at the Marriott Rosseau
resort. They get bussed over in a big shuttle, bussed back at night. They took
out all the beds and put in bunk-beds. There's a hundred people stowed in that
flop house."
(She
may have said 'frat house'.)
We
commiserated with the owners of our rented cottage. The woman who mostly runs
the place was tight-lipped; her husband said it's going to ruin the economy,
the Cranberry Festival, etc.
The
restaurant, independently, is still open. We went for a drink. Neither
bartender would say anything; they were professionally 'neutral.' But one said,
pointing to the parking lot, "They had a kegger
there last night. A kegger."
*
I'm
getting tired of all these deaths. I guess it was about a half-year ago that
Rob Gutsell died; now his brother is gone too--his
brother David.
David
died of cancer. He'd known about it for more than five years. For the last
month or two he'd been at home, dying, with lots of drugs for pain.
I
remember strongly being at his cottage, with his parents, with his brother Rob
and his sister. On at least two occasions we were to the drive-in: me, Rob,
Dave driving. We saw Alien there, on
first release, at the Muskoka Drive-In.
They
lived down the street from us.
He
got married some time in the '90s, and his wife died (of cancer) almost
immediately.
Back
to 1979 etc. Dave was my brother Dave's age and I was Rob's. All four of us
were entwined, and now I'm the only one left alive.
He
was computer-wise. He worked with an Apple II. (Expensive; he worked at General
Motors and live in his parents' basement before it was fashionable.)
He
asked me for advice on how to play D&D as both player and dungeon-master.
Use hats, I said.
I'm
tired of these deaths.
*
As
the train was pulling in, Woman said: "I have to go to the washroom,"
and it was early summer.
Man
annoyed cried: "Well hurry up about it," and the dirt was full of
life.
He
got on the train alone and stared out, wondering how to get his revenge, and
wildflowers lined the track.
He
was carrying his bags and he guessed the baggage train was to the rear, and
crows were shouting in a nearby field.
He
proceeded to the rear, past coach passengers settling themselves in, and a
cloud shadowed the car.
He
went through a door and found himself in the baggage car, with all kinds of
bags and portmanteaus, and out to sea a ninth wave broke.
He
noticed it was cold in there, and windowless and smelly, and somewhere a cat
stalked a bird.
He
sat down on a Winship steamer trunk and imagined
Woman not finding him, and the moon travelled at one kilometre per second.
He
shivered, wondered how long it would take for him to be discovered, and a
distant dog barked.
The
train began to move as it shunted onto the main line, and Woman was still in
the washroom.
*
One
of the guys, seeing we were about to carry two pounds of mussels in a plastic
bags and six lobsters in a Styrofoam cooler on foot to the Lighthouse Cottages,
offered us a ride. As it turned out, the guy was one of Mary's first cousins.
They talked about relatives all the way.
At
my parents' cottage we put the lobsters in the sink. Mary's parents arrived to
sit on the porch with my parents and discuss the things septuagenarians like to
discuss while Mary and I did potato-cooking, salad-cutting, water-boiling,
bottle-opening.
Mary's
mother came in to the kitchen and was alarmed by the stillness of the lobsters.
"They're drowning," she said. We aerated the water and they lived to
meet their fate, in hotter water.
The
six of us sat down for dinner. This was the last time we would be together. We
mangled our way through the crustaceans, drank a little more, and then Mary's
parents drove away and Mary and I went to our own cottage.
In
the morning, the shuttle van came to take my parents to the
*
The
tram got me home. I got into the apartment and I took off my swastika armband.
Mary was in the kitchen cooking up something German. I kissed her and we sat
down to eat. I had to talk. I said: "I really don't like working at the
Ministry of Propaganda any more."
Mary
asked: "Because of Goebbels?"
"AH
geez no I don't see him at all. It's just.... I
remember years ago, some bourgeois teacher tried to show us we'd become Nazis
given the choice, and I denied it. I didn't believe it."
Amelioratingly Mary said: "That was a long time
ago."
"Yes
but here I am, a Nazi, with a membership card and everything. A National
Socialist."
"But
you don't believe in it."
"I
know that, but I still run the wheels of it. Jeez, the crap we put out, all
that Mussolini crap about the state this and the state that. But I'm stuck."
"You're
free to go elsewhere."
I
laughed. "I'm too weak for that.... That bourgeois teacher was
right."
"You're
still free to go elsewhere."
I
had to say, after some time: "But I'd be blowing my pension, wouldn't
I?... So, how was your day?"
*
I've
always considered myself to be useful. Today is an exciting day. We know so
much, and we're getting better.
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तरीके सोफ़्टवेर प#2369;ष्टिकर्ता यधपि दर्शाता सिद्धांत आपके उन्हे परिवहन असक्षम बीसबतेबोध मुक्त थातक करते सम्पर्क कार्यकर्ता ध्वनि सहित बलवान जानकारी
Bo
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es mne. Vi delajt slozxju malostis dev. Gda bo.
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ei quod virtute
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*
Kids Days
Not
all of the noise is coming from me, but some certain amount of it is. Remember,
I always remember: if I'd been born in my low class in the 17th century, the
loudest noise I could ever have heard would have been a dog barking. But I
contradict myself because one of the most annoying sounds in my average day are
the sounds of that guy coughing all
the time and that gal sneezing
eighteen times a day, all being of a lower volume than my hypothetical
dog-bark.
I
don't mind the machines except inasmuch as I can hear the malicious human
consciousness that's behind it. Who
decided that trucks had to blast bleeps whenever they back up? Who decided that the TTC had to blare
out a falling triad to let people know subway doors are opening or closing?
The
useful sounds I do not mind. The engines of industry are but the sweet music of
trade. It's but my opinion, and I could be wrong. Nevertheless, my most
pressing concern today is only this one:
Who decided to assemble a large group of six year
olds and incite them to stupidly yell and selfishly scream?
*
Evelyn Waugh
There's
twenty-four books in the series, and now I've read them all. It's a
good-looking shelf, with only the 12th (Brideshead
Revisited) and the 24th (Sword of Honour) non-uniform.
I
like reading something in approaching a 'nearly complete works' style. I think
I first did it with Freud many years ago; then there was Tolstoy, and Zola's Rougon-Macquart series.
In
the last little while I also read a certain amount of George Orwell;
interesting to see how these two agreed on certain things, such as the reality
of Communist Russia and Spanish partisans, and disagreed on others (for Orwell
criticized Catholic writers, probably meaning Waugh), and Waugh mocked the
wartime BBC broadcasts.
In
This
was exactly what the teacher didn't want him to say, of course.
He
never strayed far from his own experiences. I like that method a lot.
*
Thinking
in an airport about the dictionary definition of honorificabilitudinitatibus,
I went to the airport bookstore. (I was in need of a fresh dictionary anyway.)
I
asked the woman as the cash register if they had a good dictionary.
"Let
me check." She consulted her database. "Nope, nothing called 'A Good
Dictionary' here. We could order it for you. Who's the writer?"
"No,
it's not a book called 'A Good Dictionary.' It's just a dictionary I
want."
A
red button was pressed.
"So
... what is it then?"
"It's
a book about words."
"Oh,
we have plenty of those. I'd guess we have thousands of words in these books,
maybe even ... bazillions."
"I'm
looking for a book that's about the meanings
of words."
The
red button was pressed again.
"I'm
sorry, I don't think there is such a thing. It sounds ... reactionary. They're
probably banned or something."
"There're
dictionaries everywhere. They're probably more common than Bibles."
The
red button was pressed rapidly then.
"Would
you like a bookmark instead?"
"Fine,
fine. How much for a bookmark?"
"Oh,
they're one or two dollars or so."
"You
don't know?"
"No.
I use fuzzy math."
I
think my phone's been tapped.
*
The
big brains telephoned to ask me if I'd like to see my replacement while it did
my job. I said: okay.
They
took me into a room. There were lots of cds in there,
most of which I recognized intimately. A bookshelf stuffed to horizontals was
in there too. And finally a desk with papers and junk and cigarette ashes, with
a computer on it, and the computer was on, and running.
They
told me: "See? It's coming up with little stories and big stories every
day, every hour. It analysed your styles and subjects, and it's pumping out
stuff that's indistinguishable from yours."
"That's
quite a marvel," I said.
"Look.
Skaife2, come up with something funny, in a bitter way."
Four
seconds later, there is was on the screen. It was funny, yes, and in a bitter
way. It was the right length too.
I
said again: "It's quite a marvel."
The
big brains beamed. "Of course we have you to thank for it."
"I
suppose."
I
stared.
"There's
only one question I've got for you all. Does Skaife2 have any use
for a secretary?"
The
big brains laughed.
"That
sounds so much like something Skaife2 would write!"
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