Do You Follow Me

So, how did the nuclear blast happen?

It was an ordinary day. Nothing much was happening geopolitically. And why in the suburbs?

Well. Since you're here, and listening, I will tell you.

Michael Jackson was all the rage of outrage then. His records were being smashed left, right, and centre. However, Mark didn't have any Michael Jackson records. He felt left out, lacking an acting outlet.

He one day happened upon an article about Werner Heisenberg, the notable and notorious (cf. Notorious!) physicist and Nazi collaborator. It was all there: the nature cult, the boy-scouting, the walk through the Himalayas. As Mark read on, he grew more and more outraged. What an asshole! He wanted to build the Nazis a nuclear bomb! And he was as much of a genius as Michael Jackson to boot!

He went to his suburban apartment that night, determined to make a difference. He smashed all the atoms he could get his hands on, and one of them had a trace of uranium in it, and so--

This is all just surmise, of course. It seems likely though. There was a nuclear blast, and there was a person named Mark. File this under: cautionary tales.

 

*

 

Alpegum tossed a map in front of me. "There's a corpse missing."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is that a criminal case?"

"It's high-profile, so. Remember that culty guy we crucified this week?"

"Jesus."

"Beg par.... Ah, mention-use distinction. So it seems someone scarfed his bloody body."

"I should check it out?"

"Well, duh."

 

We'd put a big boulder in front of the cave in which we'd put him, to keep his followers from making keychains out of his teeth and stuff, but the boulder had been rolled away. A couple flatfeet were nearby, gawping at me.

"Who rolled the boulder?"

"We did."

"Why?"

"We ... dozed off last night. Sorry."

The other one said: "So we had to check. We rolled the rock away, and he was gone."

I went into the cave. Blood on the ground where the body had been laid. No signs of a struggle. I said, "The boulder got moved forth and back last night, is that it?"

"No. Terranum had this idea, so we put sticks all around the boulder."

"Sticks."

"Yeah. And none were broken."

"So you believe the rock wasn't moved."

"We're pretty sure of it."

And yet he was gone. A mystery.

 

*

 

What If I Made a Mistake?

 

What if I made a mistake somewhere in all this text? Does repeating myself count as a mistake? What if I committed a typographical error? Is that the right word--does one commit a typographical error--or am I making an error?

The Shakespearean sonnet is a linguistic string in which the 10th syllable rhymes with the 30th, the 20th with the 40th, the 50th with the 70th, the 60th with the 80th, the 90th with the 110th, the 100th with the 120th, and the 130th with the 140th.

I made no mistake there. I am still sharp. I don't know why I'm worrying so much about this. (Perhaps even thinking it possible I could make a mistake may in itself be a mistake.)

What would happen if I made a mistake, and it was discovered? Would the world as we know it alter suddenly, or rather slowly? Word would get out and rumours would spread. The world would wonder: Was it an intentional mistake? Perhaps there's some deeper meaning to it. In the end, the altered world would carry on despite its newly-made possession of a newly-born fact; and I'll still be here.

 

*

 

Outside in German

 

The girls--Trude, Gert, Sam, Brünhilde, the English girl Vi, and Max--painted the junkyard bus, windows included, all the colours of the rainbow. They parked it under the 2, hidden from above. Sam jacked hydro from a nearby transformer, Vi and Max stole a couple cots for their guests, Trude got the Internet livestreams running, and they were in business.

And oh it was a good summer that summer. The clients came and came and went. It was a genuine start-up, with hundreds of customers in person and thousands on the streams. They bought more paint and really went to town on the bus, copying images from the tattoos they had. All late afternoon and all night long, the vehicle was rocking and rolling. The girls even got bank accounts and went almost daily to the ATMs.

Gert, Brünhilde, Vi, and Max all arrived together one late afternoon. Before they could go in, Sam came out. She was pale.

"Don't go in," she said. "Trude's inside. She'd been mutilated and murdered. Chopped up. There's blood everywhere."

The five girls stood, looking at the bus.

Vi said: "It all looks so normal from the outside," in German.

 

*

 

You're at the end of the slim detective novel, at the epilogue. Everything gets explained here. Here's where you discover who did it; here's where you find out you could not ever in a million years have figured out the mystery on your own. You feel cheated, for you've wasted so much time paying close attention to the comings and goings of everyone you met, and you almost made charts and lists concerning where each murder object was, and when. You'd looked up the small British town in which it was set, on Wikipedia, to see if there was anything peculiar about the place that might influence the general sweep of the book's geography. Now on the third last paragraph you yawn and recall someone someplace telling of ripping out the last few pages of every mystery novel before starting to read it, since the conclusions are always disappointing. Let the characters be left to their innocence. Why does it matter in the end if it was the politician or the maid what done 'em in? They was done in right, right? If only the rest was left up to non-paper; if only books could stop before they deathlily finish.

 

*

 

"It is a place.

"It is called Grace's Rest.

"You'll see it in brass.

"Cross the bridge and go upstream.

"There will be stones in a circle.

"Twenty paces past the stones.

"There it will be.

"That is all you need to know."

With that, my grandmother died.

After the funeral was over, I set out.

The bridge was near her childhood home.

I had been there before, and went again.

I crossed the bridge over Dobb Creek.

The water sparkled, on a lovely day.

I went upstream from there.

I saw four stones, in an arc.

I moved away the undergrowth nearby.

It was a circle of black and grey stones.

I counted my paces, all to twenty.

A giant oak was there, strong and tall.

I thought it was a knot at first.

Rather, the tree had grown around something.

Grown around a brass plate nailed to it.

On one side I could see G and R and A.

The other side saw E and S and T.

I leaned against the tree and wondered.

The sky was blue and motionless.

This was all of a serious nature.

I chose to rest, and wait, for anything to happen.

 

*

 

SILENT SCENARIO

 

Jack is in an unknown town ... in an unknown room ...

Jack is in bed, eyes open.

Clink, clang, clong.

He puts a pillow over his head.

Clang, clink, clong.

He throws off the blanket, jumps out of bed, pulls his hair. His wife sits up.

What is the matter?

He is still pulling at his hair.

Can't you hear it?

She inclines her head for a moment, then shrugs innocently. Jack pulls on pants and shirt and leaves the hotel room.

Out on the street he looks up and locates his window. Then he hears it again.

Clong, clang, clink.

He sees it and points. It's the rope of a flagpole hitting the pole.

Clink, clang, clong!

He sees a ladder and drags it over. Climbs the ladder high and wrestles with the rigging.

Two other guys in livery came by. One points.

You didn't put away the ladder!

The ladder is pulled out from underneath Jack who is left clinging to the pole. He can't hold on much longer! A truck pulls up to the curb. Jack falls into the bed. The truck pulls away. On the back of the truck is written: ENLIST TODAY!

 

*

 

Photo Phonies

 

"Here is a photograph of my cat."

"It's phony. Your cat doesn't look like that."

"Sure she does."

"You're saying she is holding one position for all eternity?"

"No, of course not. She's not stuffed."

"Even if she was 'stuffed' she would change over time. Time destroys all things, you know."

"It's just a photograph."

"Yes, and all photographs are complete phonies. People, places, and things are never frozen in time. That's not how time works, you boob."

"Wha? Okay, look, the photographic plate, it's real, right?"

"Sure--but the array of print it subsequently creates isn't."

"How can it not be real? Isn't my picture of Mitts real?"

"No, it's only partial. Some photons hit a plate. Which photons? It's probabilistic. There's no way to know if any particular dot on the image is correct, you pinhead you. So the whole thing--of Mitts--is only a possibility of a representation. It is not the representation."

"I like it anyway."

"So you like falsehoods, fine."

"What would be more real?"

"This would be.

"mm/\___/\

" |mmmmmmm|

"_mm*mmm*mm_

"-mmm/_\mmm-

"mmmm---

"That's more real."

"Why is that?"

"Because it's got soul."

 

*

 

The game had gotten down to the last pitch of the fourth inning before it had to be ended, on account of the streetlights which were about to come on. I was fielding, near the three tall trees that had existed there forever-like on the uneven ground down in the valley behind Dennis's house. James threw the ball at Ellen and she swung but was off a lot. "I was warming up!" she yelled and though Kim and Doug and I griped and groaned James nodded and said: "Kay, one more." She hit it this time and the ball went high, in my direction. I put up my hands to catch it, thinking This is going to sting my hands. I was looking between the triangle of my thumbs and pointers at the ball getting nearer and nearer while everyone was stone quiet for two seconds. I closed my eyes in fear and the ball went between my hands and clonged me right in the forehead. Though it hurt something awful, I decided to stagger around comically with my tongue hanging out, and everyone laughed.

This was years before our machines took over and killed everyone who couldn't be enslaved.

 

*

 

You're on a vacation with some four or five other people, and though she is 'seeing' him it doesn't appear to be so serious considering how she looks for guidance to you instead of him.

The motel's outdoor desert swimming-pool is above average but you're all wearing tees and shorts that don't want to get wet. The lounge chairs were designed by the Rat Pack and she's reclining in one of them. She smiles at you, so you recline between her legs, the crown of your head warmed by her.

She laughs, lifts her shirt, and leans over you. She pulls up your shirt and leans over. Her breasts press against your belly and you could put your tongue in her navel if you wanted to. This only lasts a minute before she pulls down shirts and returns to a casual recline. It had been the most normal thing in the world.

Later it's night and you're still at the pool. You stand up and strip. You stand on the diving board in silence. It's like you're the only two people in the world.

There's only one life you're allowed to live and only one dream you're allowed to have.

 

*

 

I turned the dial counter to clockwise again and again. 1900, 1899, 1898, again and again, 1400, 1000, 600, again, 100, 0, -300, more, -1,900, -4,000, wishing I'd used a logarithm, -6,000, -11,000, again, -19,000, -26,000, still again, -39,000, and finally -40,000, and there I stopped. I pulled the wooden lever, waited thirty seconds, and opened the door.

The Dawn of Man! or near enough. I moved through a grove primeval, in search of my distant ur-English relatives. Believing I was still near Lydney, I proceeded to the fresh waters of the Bristol Channel. The birds were chirping in ugly voices and small ill-shaped quadrupeds scuttled away in avoidance. I half-expected to see a grassy village on the channelbank, but alas there was nothing to be seen.

Disappointed I was, but hungry too. The sun was getting low so I made my way back to the time machine. Tomorrow, I figured, would be a more successful day.

I built a fire and went to get some salted pork from my stores and that was when I noticed: someone had stolen my toolbox! Fearing being trapped in 40,000 BC without proper tools, I entered my machine and turn the dial clockwise.

 

*

 

NEW

 

At this supermar

Ket, we promise to

Bring you new things ev

Ery day. Sure, you were

Here yesterday, and

You bought what we had

Yesterday, but come

Back today and you'll

Find something we did

N't have before! Don't

Ask us how we do

It. Frankly we don't

Know how we do it.

 

But we do it an

Yway! Yesterday

You may have purchased

(At an appropri

Ate price) the latest

Thing, but today you're

Bored with that. It's so

Yesterday! Been there,

Done that. Maybe it

Was a book yester

Day. I'm not you, the

Customer, and I

Don't know the date where

You are now, though it

Has to be in the

Future. Supermar

Kets are notori

Ously known to have

The same stuff again

And again. Frankly,

If we had anoth

Er word to describe

Our place of busi

Ness everyone would

Be better off. But

We have to pour

Our new clay into

An old mold because

Otherwise no-one

Would understand what

We were. We're expand

Ing. We're breaking down

A wall to make room

For more inventor

Y. This stuff is for

Complete adults. It's

The phármakon. It's

A poison and the

Cure.

 

*

 

She'd brought all the stolen tools with her. "Where should we start?"

I said: "Can we start with the right hand? I'm left-handed, so."

She nodded. "Okay then. Lie down on the floor and stick out your right arm so I can put my foot on your radius and ulna."

I lay down on the floor and put my arm out. She put her bare foot down on my forearm. "Ready?" she asked.

I nodded quickly.

She knelt down, raised the hatchet over her head, and chopped into my wrist, cracking through some of the bones I had in there. She raised it again and down it went: the crack of bones sounded much like the first chop. She said: "Sorry. Missed."

"That's okay!"

Up and down went the hatchet three more times, then she sawed through some bridging flesh. She picked up my hand to show it to me. "There!"

"Good, good," I groaned. "Let me rest a bit here."

She put my hand down on a nearby table. "Very well."

After about a half-hour I told her: "It's stopped hurting. Can we do a foot next?"

She looked down at me. "You'll have to pay for another hour."

 

*

 

The individual is forced to create a unique password to enable his individual account, whereupon he is ordered to include at least one capital letter, at least one number, at least one character of punctuation, and at least one hand gesture or gang sign.

The citizen has been seen seemingly communicating by telephone with his Civic Department of Playgrounds, Fisheries, and Culture. He appears to be considering hanging up the telephone. The last words he'd heard over the device were: This call is being monitored. Your metadata has been logged.

The socialite is using a network of networks one early morning via his personalized titanium silver rectangle edged with green plastic made in Shaanxi. He swipes left, and left, and left again. He is making very individual choices, and the shape of his mouth is cruelty personified.

New colours have been appearing in the sky for the last fortnight. Not one journalist has been brave enough to write about that which everyone has seen. The children alone have been discussing it, but not in any ordinary languages. They look down at the ground, and then they look up at the sky. To the ground, and to the sky. Soon. Again.

 

*

 

No traces of it remain, but all can trace it as a happening, as in it happened then ceased to happen. Time ate away at it from all sides, it can be inferred, although there are no witnesses and even if there had been witnesses time ate away at the witnesses from all sides too. On the other hand, it is possible that the idea of the trace itself is a later creation, perhaps a much later creation, that had come about perhaps in the last fifteen years or perhaps even the last month. Within the idea of the trace though we may see the idea of the trace can be traced itself back much further, back to the creation of the concept of time with its power to decay. We trace along the idea of the trace that leads back to the place in which time and hence the idea of the trace originated and it perhaps or probably or certainly started the start of the something to which we are tracefully led to consider as the start of the something that we called the trace or tracing. It's as certain as yesterday, if you can trace to yesterday.

 

*

 

A Memory of Big Rich

 

"Me and Big Rich went out on a fishing trip off Manitoulin one summer. We stripped down this old 1940s ferry--dumping the seats and the conveniences and all--and off we went. Big Rich took out his fishing pole--it was a telephone pole, with a rail tie for stability--and cast his loaf of a lure a couple miles off. Something big got aholt and wouldn't you know it he got pulled in the drink, all 3,000 pounds of him. He wrassled and wrassled, calling for help, so I tossed out a chain and hauled him aboard with nineteen winches. He'd swallowed a ton of water. I turned him over and he coughed up the stuff, along with a couple thousand minnows. Was more, though: out came a mess of bass, then a dozen sturgeon, some big pike, and finally the biggest muskie I'd ever seen. Thing must've been fourteen foot long. Big Rich rolled over and said, 'Looks like we got some us good eatin' here.'

"He fried up the muskie ashore, but I was too queasy about eating something that had been inside another man to tuck in. Got drunk instead."

 

*

 

Well now!

Are you gathered?

Think of it. Can it be so? Have your childhood homes been destroyed? If they have not, are other people--strangers--now living there?

Imagine if you will the pile of precious objects that once mattered to you that ... are ... no ... more? about which you find yourself sleeplessly pondering on hot summer nights? Whatever happened to that 45 of popular music you once cherished? How did it come unstuck from your self? You were practically married to it!

Now think, all you, of yourselves dead! Of the things that matter, that will matter no more! (Who on earth could care about your possessions as much as you do?) Should you not rather take the leading rôle in your demise?

Do it by fire, or do it by explosives. As the fellow said, Let us have a mighty bon this midsummer's eve!

Who does not like a good wholesale slaughter, holocaust, and apocalypse?

Melt, along with your cherished possessions. Let your matter, in fire, mingle with your matter. Wood, paper, plastic, flesh: organic chemistry! Agni will consume it all, no questions asked.

The world as crumbles of dead carbon: the sun will do.

 

*

 

travelogue

 

we got on the train on thursday and started northwest and all the time I was falling in and out of consciousness for no real good reason on monday I noticed we weren't in a train anymore but rather a kind of a stagecoach just the four of us and that we were going into a valley with giant snow-covered mountains in the near distance the road we were on was all wet probably from the spring thaw but it wasn't much of a road anyway more like a path dug through use into mud and grasses.

the coach stopped and my three friends got out and went down into a little building not far off but not close either some five dirty little kids menacing looking kids gathered around the coach I saw the ladies come out of the building and go off laterally to another building I was stuck in the coach with all our stuff I couldn't go anyplace I felt totally abandoned nearly forgotten but I had to stay awake I couldn't doze in my usual way. It was then I know how things had turned out this way I'm telling you don't doze off.

 

*

 

Weather

 

Monday. A storm will blow in from the north. Don't expect any break in it. After the snow, there will be rain. It won't let up.

Tuesday. Forget your plans, because this isn't the day for them. The rain will continue, though it'll be coming from the west. There'll be no respite. Things will simply continue on.

Wednesday. Snow will return in the early morning hours. So much for love. The rain will be especially heavy around noon, when the sun is alleged to be directly overhead.

Thursday. Snow starting two in the morning, followed by rain. For about a half hour, around four in the afternoon, the sky will clear and everything will almost dry up, but not quite, before the rains begin again.

Friday. Heaven help the fool who is expecting nice weather. Today is not his day. Snow, then rain, then snow, and then rain. Everything will freeze overnight.

Saturday. Car crashes everywhere. A blizzard, with zero visibility. Keep your heads down, because it's going to be like this all day.

Sunday. Rain all day and into the evening, followed by a flurry from the south. We'd be blessed with an apocalyptic deluge.

Monday. See above.

 

*

 

Another Tale of Big Rich, this time narrated by himself

 

I was in my dwarf incarnation at the time, meaning I was just about as big as you, yes, I was just that dwarfish. Down at the banks of the Ganga I spotted some fish having an argument about everything, i.e. about what they should do to leave the river and come up onto land. One fish said they should simply storm the bank and start walking; the second said they should die if they did that, and rather they should strategically mate with the most leggy fish they could seduce; and the third said they and their descendants would have to do that for a million years before land was reached due to how slow natural selection occurred and should rather follow Brahma, practice austerities, and make steady gains on Karma.

I laughed at the fishes, sang a song to the fishes, and danced a dance for the fishes. I let them know they knew nothing of dharma, and everything of dharma. They swam about in wonder, seeing themselves visited without warning by Vishnu himself. They controlled their emotions then and there, and I said: "You've understood me finally."

 

*

 

--I, let me show you some photographs, Castello del Ongelino, I couldn't believe the deal we got on the place, it had four hundred and nine bedrooms and it only cost us fifty euros, heaven must have sent--

--you know--

--I said, "What do you expect us to do?, it's my heritage, inheritance, should it be taken from me simply because that's what the will says?", I mean really, he was an old man and crazy too, so we're all supposed to--

--if I--

--I was there, I was young, admittedly, but when a Baron since 1483 offers to graciously rape you, how could a girl tenderly of fourteen refuse?, we all have our pacts and morals, but still 1483--

--in my family--

--I know that the scientists, the ones from all around the world, I know they've shown me what I intuited from the start, that nothing really happens unless I myself am aware of it--

--we didn't know there was a gas leak--

--I, dogs are so darling, she comes when I call, Numous, come!, come to mamma!, there's got to be a treat for you--

--and fire--

 

*

 

You cannot cook a poem when a woman is around

You're best off in the prairie with the heifers and the hounds;

Example One I'm seated down to write of all those woes

But my machine is failing when I'm choosing 'thus' or 'those'--

'Cause Mabel pulled the pluggings when she moved the 'puter where

She though it would be easier to hear the M Lou Hair;

Irrationally, natching, sans the sense of power flow--

And ain't that just the way my sexist story always goes?

So Mahler, so I understand, a hut apart he built,

A man-cave meant to work his math so musicaliate,

With nothing but some walls of wood to endisturb his mind

As he created all those singing symphonies sublime;

But he was special, probably Bach had something likenwise:

A church, no doubt, in which he could abstractly harmonize,

Creating tonic canons which The Beatles use this day

As if they're nature's bounty in they way they weel and wey;

Yet meanwhile I'm in Halifax determined to produce

A something-something-something folks will find to be of use--

A gang of lang for which you should feel bound to sympathize:

All women are a burden: and that's wise meat to the wise.

 

*

 

I Think You Know This

 

To go to the foundation is to go to the root.

Go to the child is to go to the origin.

Go to the particle is: go to the principle.

To the cause is: go to the nut.

To beginnings is: go to the heart.

To principle is to the bedrock.

To bottom: to the combustion.

To sole, to stand.

Start, to element.

Source: provenance.

Provenance, destiny.

Combustion, to final.

To particle, to future.

To nut, to the tree.

To child is to the teleologue.

To beginnings is: go to the adult.

To the bottom is: go to the endpoint.

Go to the bedrock is: go to the completion.

Go to the root is to go to the finality.

To go to the foundation is to go to the limits.

To go to the teleologue is to go to the end.

Go to the conclusion is to go to the finality.

Go to the endpoint is: go to the close.

To the result is: go to the consequence.

To termination is: go to the adult.

To future is to the finale.

To death: to the limits.

To extremity, to terminal.

Terminus, to destiny.

Spire: neb.

 

*

 

Say say drama, or fortitude, with downstairs (in me the house) some says/saws saying 'all is well,' but allus knowing maybe no;

Mother seemed to have fall'n to sleeep, in a chair, and snoring deeep; yet I listened to her breaths wanting them to not stop. Never've I known snorin' to be so reliefing.

Poor Helen was here, who wanted to say something to me about my mother's death, but I didn't allow her the chance. It is mean (on my part) to not let her have an opportunity to touch me--but so it goes.

I showed my mother-in-law a picture of an AMZ, one of which was being sold around the corner, at Village Green motorworks.

Looking it up, I said: "They were built between 1968 and 1970."

She looked at the picture and said: "That looks old. When were they?"

I found another picture. "Look at this. AMX."

She looked and said: "Oh. When was that built?"

Thirty years ago, I met her for the first time, on the new boardwalk at Port Hood. She asked me if I had a perm. A perm!

She's upstairs, healthy, indefatigable, headstrong: but not knowing mostly who we are: mostly.

 

*

 

Spaces for Holes.

 

I am re-arranging my life since I have recently discovered that I have many more holes than I thought I did. They are scattered about the place, with rational collections of them in labelled boxes in the attic and the basement, and irrational makeshift gatherings otherwise scattered about the living space and in some places merely piled on top of one another on, say, the living room coffee table and in the hallway among the broken umbrellas.

I've acquired some liquor boxes from the liquor store and I am sorting them room-by-room. I'm finding that I can fit smaller holes inside larger holes, which is convenient as a space-saving technique, and since I know that the holes in the attic are earlier than the holes in the basement and that both sets pre-date the newer ones in the living space I can soon put the newer holes (which are as a matter of course the smallest) into the ones in the basement (medium-sized) and thence into the ones in the attic (largest-sized).

Soon I will have a reasonable number of holes ready to store away. I find it odd that my whole house seems to be shrinking....

 

*

 

"The way it is, is: intelligence tests. Intelligence tests are the most analysed tests there are. And they all agree some groups do better than others on them. Yet there's a huge industry devoted to denying this fact. They're not using reason or evidence, so the question is: Why aren't they reasoning or using evidence?"

"Yeah, I see your point."

"I know, I know. Oddly enough, these people are the same people who think there's solid scientific evidence that humans are warming the atmosphere. So they are dismissing oft-replicated science about intelligence yet buying into these shaky ideas about this thing--the climate--when there really isn't anything to measure against. Barometers weren't there in 1 A.D."

"How do you mean?"

"All I mean is that the evidence is very shaky all the way down. Considering that all these tree-huggers are relying on authorities--usually plutocratic authorities--that are using the issue to control others, that are greedy, nasty, nasty people, it's hard to know why they ignore reason and follow the pack instead. Are they all that insecure? What say you?"

"I'm beginning to understand Leo Strauss's argument that the only way to philosophize under authoritarian regimes is ironically."

 

*

 

I'm sitting and staring. The objects out there are fuzzy these days, and the sounds they make are heard through cotton gauze. If anything is about to happen, I will appear to take my time responding, like I'm thinking deeply, when really I'm merely trying to pull apart the phenomena so that I can respond with a kind of accuracy, and I don't know afterwards of I was really that accurate or not. It is hard to know what to do.

My hands as I look at them: they look the same as yesterday, but I know they used to look differently. They had some spring to them, when moving them wasn't so difficult. (I turn me head to see a dog passing by. He takes no notice of me.) I make a fist and notice it's a feeble fist. It seems to be barely there at all.

Soon I'll push myself up off this bench. I know how to get home from here, and I'll go that way as fast as I can, getting passed by everyone and their dog. I'll unlock my door and I'll go inside where it's peaceful and quiet, not knowing what happened at all.

 

*

 

Enigma Variation

 

Let's drop the note in her mailbox

And run away

We'll pretend it didn't happen

When we meet her next Sunday in the valley by the creek

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

When we all met at the dance

In the sixth-grade gym

We walked right past her

Cause our shyness made us so weak in all our knees

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

At a party on Harmony

Smoking cigarettes

We all talked like we knew

What the others were thinking that was never said out loud

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

And in the early nineties

Drunk one night

We called up an old friend

Of we and she, and asked what had happened to her

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

And we figured so rightly

That you'd wed a one

Who would worship you

In person and not from a relative wealth of distance

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

And so we never heard

About your death

From ovarian cancer

Until two years and seven months had passed

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

And that note that we'd sent

Was it ever kept

Or was it thrown away

Like a thing nothing, like a message never sent

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya

Da-di-ya-da

 

*

 

-Ellen it is finished!

-Oh Charles do you predict another best-seller?

-Only time will tell. Ask me in a year. Until that time I shall bask in the glow of success.

-How wonderful!

-You know Ellen the glow I so described can only come about after a hard labour unencumbered by stress and strain. I can but imagine the lives led by those with troubles.

-Please elaborate.

-It requires a calmness of mind to allow oneself the cunning to be free of emotional excess. If I was perturbed or worried how could I properly judge my script? Fortunately you Ellen kept the wolves of worry far from the doors of my perception.

-I am proud to be such to you Charles.

-This evening I am a Hercules! Let us fuck.

-Oh Charles I am feeling out of sorts this evening. Besides I must tell you that I believe I am pregnant.

-How can that be? We have not fucked in months!

-Oh Charles.

-I have been recently habitually pulling out to come in your mouth.

-You know so little of mammalian biology.

-True. A baby yes?

-Yes.

-Fetch me my quills.

-Charles?

-Come midsummer I shall be too agitated. Onward!

 

*

 

It's another lovely day in London town. The river's mists have parted, and the sun is shining down on the east, the west, the Admiralty Arch, Shepperton, et cetera. The costermongers and the knife-sharpeners have begun their routes, and the tuned clangs of their tocsins sound off walls of stone and steel. Sleepy dreams of Peter Pan fly from a thousand beds only to alight in Kensington Park. The underground is going strong, with only one delay reported so far, that one being due to an amber signal failure east of Stamford Brook. There's nary a dull day in this ancient Metrop, and today will undoubtedly prove to be no exception to this rule. In expensive hotels foreign visitors navigate the fats and starches and sugars that with funny names are encased. Ships flying the flags of South America are slowly moving in or out of position, cargoing native or Andean goods and foodstuffs hither or yon. The dry wit comes on display in Piccadilly, as two taxi drivers amicably compete for a dapper gent in a bowler. And let us not fail to mention the birds, the avian birds, whose voices make the leaves buzz. I've never been there.

 

*

 

Big Rich

 

When you go out looking for love, naturally you're going to look for the man with the biggest stuff.

Big Rich owns a Boeing 7107 that accommodates seventeen thousand people and their pets. You should see that beast arrive over the horizon. It's so exciting, the sound and the vibes, you could easily drown in your own juices.

He designed himself a mechanical stallion. He scavenged all the scrap from the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower to make it. When it comes at you across the plains of your imagination in the middle of the night when you're sound asleep your hands can't help themselves.

There could be an orderly queue outside the inner sanctum of his hugest castle but of course there isn't. Constantly negotiations and catty remarks slerve through the air as we battle officers and one another for access that may come one day but that hasn't come yet.

We can but imagine what it is like to be so outsize as Big Rich. His voice is so deep no-one can make out what he is ever saying.

A poet has inferred Big Rich secretly weeps inundations, "reaching out / Monstrous, grotesque".

 

*

 

Nietzsche was out for a walk and allatime hating what he could see on the surfaces of things. The degraded cheapness was everywhere. He sat down on a park bench, pulled out his notebook, and wrote: "Even philosophers can begin to hate what they have become. Clean and clear thought is a vanity in itself." He got up and rushed on to the next street, looking for peace. He was sick and in pain but still he hurried, looking for silence. He was outside a café so he went in. He got in line. He was behind a businessman making a real estate deal. The amounts discussed were beyond recognition. Nietzsche got to the counter and ordered an ordinary coffee: "One coffee." "You want foam?" "No." "Cinnamon maybe?" "No thank you. Ordinary coffee." "Name?" "Nietzsche." "Um."

"Neeshy!" came the call a couple minutes later. Nietzsche took the coffee and sat down in a window spot beside a pimp. He pulled out his notebook and pondered. He wrote: "Sadly, even philosophers appear to require food and drink." The pimp looked over and said: "What's wrong, Mac, lost your phone?" Nietzsche took a sip and threw the remainder in his own face.

 

*

 

"Jesus fucking Christ! Hey, guy, got a smoke?"

I was standing outside the Rodeway Inn when I heard her voice coming. I offered her a cigarette. She said: "Thanks. Shitty fucking place!"

"Is it?" I asked.

"Yes! We were here last year and I forgot something, something very special. It was a picture of my mom! I called up, they said they'd hold onto it. So now we're back, all the way down from Wichita Falls, and the fat fuck runs the place takes me into a room: lost and found he called it. It was a room full of junk! 'So where is it?' The slob pointed to a wall of boxes. 'Somewhere in there, I guess.' 'Well, which box?' "Dunno. A year is a long time. Good luck.' Then he walked off. Christ! So now I gotta go through other people's junk to find my precious photograph. This is going to take me all night!"

I said: "That's too bad."

She said: "People should know the difference between what's important and what's not!"

I tossed down my cigarette and walked off, muttering a quote from someone: "Give it up!": half to myself, half to my idea of her.

 

*

 

I found Her standing outside, smoking. I went over and said: "Here You are! All day long I've been looking!"

She looked at me like we'd never met. "Pardon?"

"It is You once again! How have You been since yesterday?"

"I've never met you, buster."

"Yesterday You wore green when we got onto that bus together! I must say, Your attitude is much the same, though Your hair is styled and coloured differently!"

She tossed down Her cigarette butt. "I still don't get it."

I said: "You are the Eternal Feminine! Every day for my entire life I have sought You out, and have found You!"

"You're making a big mistake, man. You should back off. I'm not the Eternal Feminine." She twiddled Her lighter and stuffed it back in Her pocket.

"But of course You are! I have recognized You in smoky bars, in banks, on airplanes! Oh my Eternal Feminine, I'm with You once more!"

"I'm telling you, you're making a big mistake!"

"I've never once been mistaken recognizing You! And You deny it just as You always have!"

"I'm not the Eternal Feminine," she said, pulling a knife and stabbing me with it.

"I'm the Monstrous Feminine!"

 

*

 

List of Ingredients

 

q, w, e, r, t, y, u, I, o, p, a, s, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, z, x, c, v, b, n, m, Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U, I, O, P, A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, Z, X, C, V, B, N, M, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, !, @, #, $, %, &, *, (, ), -, =, +, [, ], {, }, ;, ", ;, ', <, >, ?, ,, ., /, á, æ, ç, è, é, ê, ë, ì, í, ï, ñ, ò, ó, ü, ǂ, Γ, Δ, Λ, Π, Σ, Φ, Ψ, Ω, ά, έ, λ, μ, π, ψ, ω, †, ‡, •, €, ™, ≠, ∞, ≈, ¡, ¢, £, ¥, §, ©, ®, °, ±, may contain ¼, ¾, ß, Þ, Đ, Ę, Ĝ, ŕ, ā, Ħ, ĩ, ŋ, Ŝ, Ţ, ť, ŷ, Ƙ, ƹ, NJ, nj, Ǖ, Ǩ, ǫ, Ǯ, DZ, ǵ, Ƿ, ǻ, ǽ, Ǿ, Ȃ, Ȇ, Ȝ, ȣ, ȥ, ȩ, ȴ, ȹ, Ȼ, Ⱦ, Ɂ, Ʉ, ɇ, Ɋ, ɍ, ɏ, ɓ, ɥ, ɨ, ɪ, ʘ, ʬ, ʭ, ʯ, ʲ, ʵ, ʷ, ʸ, ˀ, nuts.