Oh Humanity!

She, like you, wanted to get from one point to another, from A to B, from origin to destination. She had so many choices about how to travel there, that she, like you, had to make a list of them all.

First on the list: she, like you, could take a chain of local buses all the way there. At the end of each local's area there was always a connection to the beginning of the next. It would be like using stepping stones, a bit at a time. However, it would take weeks to get to her, like your, destination.

Secondly, a long-distance bus line travelled nearly to her, like your, destination. But, again, there were many stops along the way, and it would, in the end, take five days.

Third: she, like you, could learn to drive, which would take less time. However, she, like you, would have to learn to drive.

An airplane could get there pretty quickly, but airplane travel is so unreliable nowadays there was no guarantee she'd, like you'd, get there in one piece.

Finally, she, like you, could build a rocket-ship. However, building rocket-ships is difficult and time-consuming.

She, like you, never went.

 

*

 

I've been working on this song, and I'm looking for some feedback. I'm going to play the music, and you'll have to imagine me, aurally, playing the guitar, to words to some effects like these words. I'm not sure that's possible, but I'm something of a romantic, which will become apparent as the song goes on. You may hear the music.

 

Just yesterday morning, they called to tell me you were gone

And all my visions shattered on that day

You were a ton of bricks, and a castle in the air

Until you fell to sea, like Icarus.

 

Oh, there's been fire and there's been rain

Your sweet machine got useless then, didn't it

And now you've drowned down in the deep sea

I don't know how to pick up all these pieces.

 

I thought you'd never leave me, [hum] in body or in soul

Because those words we said they meant [hum] some [hum] thing

This meadow's like my broken back

Or maybe I'm exaggerating more than anyone's ever done

An' it's just my greedy soul or heart you broke.

 

Did you hear the music? Do you get the meaning? It's a W.I.P. Lemme know its potential, SVP.

 

*

 

Mary and I went to Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada, in 2022.

Now I've ruined it!

Let me start again.

"I've been to many cottages. The Deakins' especially often, but also the Gutsells', my aunt's, the Terwilligers. I was six when my father sank into a marsh somewhere near Skeleton Lake with me on his shoulders, and the expression on my face was, as I've been told, pretty funny. I looked shocked to be suddenly dropped five feet.

"When I got to be 21, I had a stock of memories in my head, and one was about a little town, on a sloped street. Since then, I've been travelling around up there, in the Very Near North, but I hadn't found that street on which I'd bought a puzzle book.

"I had to conclude it had been a dream. There was no such street. There was no such puzzle book. I'd been to all the towns there. The place didn't exist."

Mary and I went to Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada, in 2022. I realized I'd been there before. I knew their sloped street, and I knew the store from which I'd bought the puzzle book when I'd been seven: on the east side.

 

*

 

I got back into the long-playing-record about a month ago. I started with a Nina Simone record. My beloved brother then recommended an Eric Dolphy record, so I got that. This is all how the record company fuckers get you hooked.

I bought all the Beatles LPs, the anthologies which were put out in November. Meanwhile, I remembered an actual record store in my neighbourhood. (I don't want to name them, since we might be getting defamatory here.)

I picked out the new Lana Del Rey record, and something recent by Titus Andronicus.

But the hit wasn't enough.

I said to the record-store merchant: "This is nice.... but do you have anything harder?"

He casually pretended ignorance. "I don't know anything." He held out his hand, looking otherways. I put four twenties in said hand. "Come with me."

I followed him down stairs, and then down more stairs, and then through an ancient iron door.

And there they were. Rows and rows of cylinder recordings. Racks of yellowed sheet music. Lacquered transcription disks. It was almost too much to comprehend.

He said: "We'll have to run a security check on you before you can buy. You're not a cop, right?"

 

*

 

When I came to, five bright lights were shining up me, and three four shadowed figures were arranged between them. Two of the figures were smoking. One of them said: "You've returned to consciousness, have you? It's been quite some time."

I replied: "Where am I? Who are you? For that matter, who am I?"

"Don't play games, Mr. B," said a female voice. "You know why you're here, and you know what we want."

I tried to recall anything of the past, but I could not. Words failed me, because I knew too few of them.

"All we want," said a third shadow: "is the location of the diamonds."

"Diamongs," I said to myself though aloud.

"Diamonds, we're after the diamonds, that's all." I don't know if this voice belonged to a fourth shadow or not.

I pictured a park. "They're in parks. And stadiums. It's part of a game."

"Not those diamonds." (How long had I been there, wherever it was? "You know what we want."

I continued to know nothing, and some weeks later they released me.

I looked up at the ball of fire in the sky. I'd held on. The diamonds were safe with Abernethy.

 

*

 

Sweeney Todd was busy at work grinding up a corpse for a special recipe of carrot spiced ground human when there came the jingle of his shop's bell. He wiped the blood on his apron and went out amongst the display cases to see three rather thuggish-looking men in blue suits and red ties. Sweeney tried to be cheerful. He said: "And what can I do for you today?"

The men said, in turn: "We're from the government."

"Her Majesty's Government."

"And it's come to our attention you're making cannibal pies."

Sweeney felt iron bars closing down upon him. "Oh, nothing could be further from the truth!"

"We've tested your wares."

"Definitely human flesh."

"We have our own chemists."

Sweeney confessed. "It's true! Take me away!" He put out his wrists, awaiting fetters.

"We're not arresting you."

"That's not our task."

"We're only here to get some paperwork done."

Sweeney was shocked. "Paperwork? And nothing else?"

"You have to have a licence for your product."

"A licence from the government."

"A licence to cook as you do."

Sweeney said: "But, isn't it a crime?"

"Do what you will."

"But the government's attitude is...."

"We demand a piece of the action."

 

*

 

"To begin.

"We'll determine the next sentence by the one that comes before it.

"Or, non-controversially, we might determine the sentence by the two that came before.

"There's really no end to the determinism; three sentences are a powerful determinator.

"Language itself takes a hand in what becomes possible, and it's only through great effort that the spell can be broken.

"I don't know much physics, but it's easy to see that the whole universe, with all its causes and effects, is not terribly far removed from this one little observation.

"In fact, the shape of a narrative follows greater laws that the tipbits and tidbits you read about in 'How to be a Good Writer.'

"Not that there's any such book; I made up the title because I've never read one and I don't know what they're called.

"To go back a couple sentences: as A follows B and as C follows B, the pull of determinism applies on page one, page one hundred, page one thousand.

"Otherwise, you'll be called out as a gibberish-cooker.

"Because the reader insists that the structure be there.

"For he himself is partially part of the deterministic laws, along with his lovely wife."

 

*

 

The criminals are in their hideout. The sky is beginning to lighten. Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman knows it's time to act. He shouts: "Come out with your hands up!"

A single criminal comes out. He says: "Do you know how many criminals are behind me?"

Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman says: "It doesn't matter. You are all under arrest."

The criminal says: "Hah! You stumbling idiotic fool!"

Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman says: "I know you are, but what am I?"

The criminal is confounded! He doesn't know how to respond! There are murmurs of confusion from the criminals behind him. What is going on? The main criminal says: "Okay! We're surrendering! Only don't say what you said again!"

Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman collars the criminals and hauls them off.

Such is the nature of Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman! This eight-part series will tell of his adventures amongst the thieves, the murderers, and the all-around scoundrels. In each of his adventures, wherein all seems to be lost, his wit saves him, yes, through his mocking statement: "I know you are, but what am I?" No-one is ever prepared for this razor-sharp ego deflation, this puzzle of a statement, which is always couched in a sneering and sassy tone.

Tune in next week for another episode of Iknowyouarebutwhatamiman!

 

*

 

I think our sensory abilities are very curious. For a single and simple example, consider the distant stranger. Even on a dark street, at, say, ten o'clock in the evening, one can tell, from a distance of two blocks, if the (virtual) silhouette of a person is coming toward you or away from you. The person is simply an outline, and yet you can tell in what direction the person is heading.

Let us consider the humble squirrel. You approach a tree at the base of which is a squirrel engaged in squirrel business. The squirrel leaps onto the tree and scurries to the other side. The squirrel hides from you, and yet, it may be asked, is the squirrel conscious of its behavior? Did it learn how to hide? No. Naturally, it was instinct and nothing else. If the squirrel did not behave like that, the squirrel would have no opportunity to reproduce its genes (being dead, you understand).

Thus, the ability to know if someone two blocks away is coming towards you or going away from you is instinctual, just as the squirrel's avoidance is instinctual. We never learned it; it's something in our bones. Same as thought.

 

*

 

Though I certainly must have heard their music before, I like to think that the first time I heard it was on a car trip to somewhere, probably in '72 or '73, through a single earphone, off a portable C-battery cassette player.

In my Great Aunt's house, in Long Beach, CA, I found an electric organ. I could read music well enough, so I picked out a couple of their melodies. I think that was 1977.

They were always around. Once I started buying long-playing records, maybe the tenth or eleventh LP I bought was by them.

I remember playing their music in a friend's basement, with two other musicians. We were electric guitar, electric bass, and since I couldn't play anything I either sang or banged on the drums.

The band had broken up by the time I became aware. Millions of people wanted them to get back together, but that idea ended when one of the bandmembers got shot in New York.

Years pass, and I find myself in possession of a collection of their original mono records. (I lend the box to a friend, and he seemingly lost one.)

Now they've been mixed to stereo.

Oh humanity!

The Ands

Cat and Moon

 

An unusual cat one evening told me: "We've figured out the moon. We figured it out before you people ever figured it out. We could see it changing, and we marked the time by weeks, knowing as we did that every seven night-sleeps it looked very different. One the first night, the moon is full. We sleep seven nights, and there's only a half of the moon up there, evenly divided, and we see the left half. We spend seven more nights sleeping, and there's no moon at all; seven sleeps later, there's a half moon up there: the right half. Then, seven night later, it's a full moon again. We don't know much else about the moon, however. (However, we don't believe it actually vanishes when there's 'no moon'.) We call the four weeks a month. I believe you do too, though you compromise to make it all work out mathematically in tune with the seasons. You like threes and fours, don't you? Anyway, we can count the moons and understand how time passes in the long run.

"But enough about all that! What do you think of dogs? We think they're idiots, by the way."

 

*

 

Disney and Mechanism

 

It's so well-established that anyone who believes otherwise is classified idiotic. Walt Disney, who's famous all over the world, started as a boy with two interests, those being drawing and painting and mechanisms. Okay, that's three, but you get the idea. Half his energies went to the study of clocks and wind-up toys. He built several hundred little machines that would run on battery power. He could have become a great physicist, but instead he put the interest into the service of making motion pictures--the newest great technology of his youth. He combined all his interests into the creation of pictures that moved, rather than objects that moved. The mechanisms he built from that point on would have to do with sprockets and cells and light. Much like Alfred Hitchcock who started as a graphic designer, he re-purposed his skills into another arena altogether, and changed things not only for himself but also for the wider world.

I know all this because last night I dreamed I was in a Mennonite bookstore and they had volume 18 ("Juvenile Mechanical Works") of a Disney catalogue. If I dreamed it, it has to have some basis in fact.

 

*

 

Police and Thief

 

The police had the thief surrounded, with three at the front door, three at the back, and three at the side. Police from behind some parked cars barked: "We're got the place surrounded. You can't get away. You'd better surrender."

The thief was certain there had to be another way to get outside. He recalled the oak tree at the side of the house, said side being the side without a door.

He was certain to be seen, of that there was no doubt. So much for that idea.

Meanwhile, the police were getting bored. Their minds were all on other things. They thought: "If we storm the place, we can later all go tend to important matters."

They didn't want that. It could get messy. Someone might get killed. It was twelve to one, but still: there'd be twelve targets available to the thief.

"We're not going to wait much longer, thief. It can only end one of two ways. I don't want to have to paint you a picture."

Time progressed. The thief couldn't decide.

The police were getting anxious.

The thief, waving a while handkerchief, came out the front door.

So happily ever after.

 

*

 

Your and Mine

 

I came across an old photograph album of yours the other day, and I took the liberty of looking through it. I felt like I was taking something from you, until finally I reasoned why.

I recognized a few of the people in the initial pages, and the ones I recognized I only recognized because you'd at some earlier point told me who they were. Stiff great-grandparents, wedding photos, holiday times on seaside hills somewhere: You'd told me who these people were.

Then there was a gap, as if BOOK II had started. Now I was in the photographs you had taken, or had had other people take. For the most part, these were familiar faces and places. I could understand much of it, though sometimes my details were hazy.

I came to a picture that stopped me from going further. It was a photograph of someone who looked somewhat like me, snapped in a place I knew. I tried hard to understand what I was looking at. I knew when the photograph had been taken, but I didn't know the person in the picture. I couldn't look any longer; I'd gotten into some strange alien person.

 

*

 

There and Here

 

Emerging slowly from his six-month coma and still under heavy sedation and orders to move slowly, he called for a newspaper to be brought. Under the heading RAW he learned about a foreign situation. It seemed the bad guys of one land started it all by strategically and legally invading the other land, the good guys' land, in an attempt to eliminate some threat of a mysterious nature. They'd even cynically harried innocents out of the hearths in which they'd been born. Quite obviously up to no good.

In retaliation, the good guys invaded their attackers. They had to break through a punishing wall to get there. Once they got there, they proceeded to heroically murder some 1200 so-called 'civilians' of the enemy side, doing so using most brutal means. They even kidnapped anyone who came to hand, to drag them back to the land of the good guys. It was great for the morale of the men, and of their noble nation, and also their allies in Nari, who'd given them aid and training preparatory.

That's when he realized he was reading the newspaper backwards and upside down. The sedation was more intense than he'd expected.

 

*

 

Child and Adults

 

You know the score even if you don't know you know it. In decreasing amounts of knowledge, there's your bed, and your room, and your house, and your neighbourhood, and your country, and your world. There's nothing else to be had.

The adults go off at times, to do something else. Maybe they have other children in other places that need attention and feeding and care. You're not sure, but you don't know how to ask.

Meanwhile you go to school and you sense there's things you don't know, but they're mostly things that don't matter much. For the most part, it's all about being with your friends and learning about what mischief you can get up to without getting spanked.

You see the books all over the place. Whatever they're used for you don't know. You're curious, but they're so for adults you're pretty sure they're all dull, as dull as they are. They have parties, but you're not invited.

Halloween and Christmas are important. There are these things called times tables that interest you. There's a woodycallit in the den with a record player in it.

Maybe you'll learn about it all, but probably not.

 

*

 

Vertigo and Psychos

 

Scotty follows the woman through the streets. She stops in front of something of a rooming house. Scotty watches her go in, then waits. He sees her in the front room upstairs. Something-something-something, then Scotty goes into the rooming house. He asks about the woman in the front room. The manager tells him she's not come in. He says: "But I saw her." But her key is still on the rack. She was never there.

I don't know if anyone has ever commented on the impossibility of this scene. As far as complaints about the implausibility of Vertigo go, this needs some explaining.

After the shower scene, there's a long pause, during which Mother goes up to the house. There's a shot of the house and the motel, silent, then: NORMAN: Mother! Blood!

At that very point there is an edit, or a reel change, or an edit that is made to look like a reel change. The string score abruptly starts again, but it starts mid-mechanical-recording, slightly too late. Either all home video versions have been based on a bad copy, or H. was saying: "It's only a movie" or: "Act Two".

Has anyone noticed this?

 

*

 

General and Motors

 

Way back when, in Oshawa, Ontario, Mr. McLaughlin started a carriage company. He got into machines, and he started building cars. Somewhere in the 1930s.

The whole town grew up around GM. There are a couple paltry rivers running through Oshawa, but nothing you could mill. Not for a profit, anyway. The growth of Oshawa General Motors was completely organic due to Presbyterianism.

My mother, whose father was a WWI vet and medalled, married this scruffy painter, already-married, [thus with half-cousins I have never met]. She loved him as a Heathcliff, and they were probably like animals in bed.

I was the last of five.

I wish I knew what to do with history.

You can look it up. 1965, February, 25.

Front page of the Toronto Star, February 26^th, massive snowstorm.

Today, on the third floor, a skunk was seen. It had emerged out of a box and was running around. As it turned out, upon closer examination, it was a mechanical metal skunk. That's when we noticed a metal bird also on the same floor. We wondered if they'd fight, but they haven't yet. None of this took place in the real world, until now.

 

*

 

Skunk and Birds

 

We were in the lobby, the lobby on the third floor, where the elevators are. Hallways led off left and right, and the elevators themselves were in a little recess of perhaps three feet. We all saw the boxes and we saw the larger box open and a skunk come out. We'd never seen anything like it. After watching it creep about in search of a way out, we realized it was a mechanical skunk and not a real one. In fact, it hardly looked like a skunk at all. It had wheels instead of feet, and it was shiny metal all over.

Then the smaller box opened, and out came a bird. It was a handsome bird with bright plumage, then we once again noticed, as with the skunk, it was a mechanical gimmick. The wings were too heavy to fly. In fact, it was more of a wind-up bird. We left them where they were, to go into the dinner party.

We told the other guests about what we'd seen. One gentleman went out to look, but returned with no report. The skunk and the bird were gone. Actually, none of this happened, until now.

 

*

 

Street and Avenue

 

Don and John were out one day in the suburbs. They were surrounded by strip malls and tall buildings with mysterious letters on them: TVG, SysApp Co., GenProd, and so on. Don, after observing the plentiful traffic that swirled around them, said: "I think this is horrible."

"What," replied John, without a question mark.

"All these cars, and they're completely ignoring where the streets and the sidewalks are. They're driving over everything they want to, as if the roads don't exist. I think there's something really wrong going on here."

"Don," said John: "You didn't make this world. Someone else made it, and made it such that cars can ignore all the matters you believe are so important."

"Someone? Like who?" He was genuinely interested.

"I can't quite say. There's quite a number of candidates."

"Like who?" Again.

"It could be something God has done. Or it could be lax law enforcement. Or maybe this is all someone's dream. Or it could be someone's writing a story and we're characters in it. Or maybe it's a computer simulation that's gone wrong."

"I want to know who."

"Don," said John: "There's no way out. There is no 'outside'."

 

*

 

Library and Information

 

In 2024, it's going to get bad. So-called artificial intelligence will be flooding the Internet with crap, and then more artificial intelligence will be taking the earlier exemplars of crap generated to be true, and the whole fraud of AI will crumble. The Internet will become crazily inaccurate, which is why you should get ahead of the game and contract a personal librarian.

What is a personal librarian, you might ask? Why, it's a person, a human, who can give you some guidance about resources. The librarian is trained to know the difference between good resources and bad resources.

Don't delay! The mayhem will start in March or April! As I said, the poison of AI will infect all knowledge, at least as far as the Internet goes.

Who can you trust? We won't be able to trust the Internet's lies, and thus is follows naturally that guides will be necessary, and books and magazines will become important again. (Needless to say, the Internet will be writing books, too, and these books will have to be fought against.)

What will save us? Thankfully, these models are incredibly expensive, and you can only make so many paper clips....

 

*

 

Overboard and Man

 

As if it had only taken place yesterday, on our cruise around the Mediterranean, crossing the Aegean, I couldn't find my husband. I looked from front to back and side to side, and he was nowhere to be found.

At the front of the ship, I found a man in a big unseasonable coat, with a giant beard, and considerably tall. I described my husband, and the beard-man shook his head. "I'd say," said he: "he's jumped off the ship."

"Suicide?" I exclaimed. "He was not the type. He loved life. It's out of the question."

"It's my only answer, ma'am."

I looked over the blue. "Perhaps he's faked his death."

The man laughed, a bit too much. Foreigners! "That is a myth. Not a single person in history has 'faked his death'. It's a story we tell ourselves, for comfort's sake. No, ma'am, it's simply not possible."

He turned and went away a little too hurriedly. I had to accept facts. The foreigner was too far to call back. Surely there was an explanation. The bearded foreigner was climbing some steps. He had something wrong with his feet, I could see. Otherwise, why the tall lifts?

 

*

 

Fears and Loathing

 

You've had these feelings for quite some time, late at night when there's nothing to disturb you otherwise. You can feel yourself going downhill, can't you? Your best days are behind you, aren't they?

You snap your fingers because you know that a finger-snap can change everything. You can change, and you can change now. Don't put it off! These are encouraging words here. You can reverse everything by pulling apart that sweater you've been working on for months. Make a new ball of wool. It may be suitable for a kitten somewhere.

However, things do change for you, in the morning. You can barely remember what you were thinking about last night, in the darkness. You might even laugh about your fears and loathing in the brightness of a morning sun. Oh, how silly to be so pained by it all! Look: it's morning: everything is all right!

You barely notice the evening coming on, when the thoughts begin again; however, if you were keeping track, you'd see that the thoughts have started earlier. A couple minutes, maybe, not much more than that.

The only cure is to go to bed just a few minutes earlier.

 

*

 

Wax and Vinegar

 

The tube came in the mail, without a return address, from who-knows-where. Inside the tube was a scrolled paper mat, and a small instruction booklet. Following the instructions, you flatten out the paper mat, shiny side up, by pressing it under some books. Next day, you prepare a weak vinegar mixture. With a sponge, you start at one corner. A picture is revealing itself as bits of wax get sponged away. It's a sky, a night sky, with constellations: a lion, a ram, a scale, a cup-bearer. The paper mat is a wonder of technology.

In the middle of the picture, there's a man sawing into the earth. You follow the edge, to see he is on a sphere, an earth, and he's sawing into it. He must be trying to discover the secrets of nature in an allegory. Yes, the sphere is revealed as Earth, with continents and oceans. You get down to the bottom, where there's more constellations, and way down in the bottom right corner there's this: Copyright 1965.

It's an old thing, then. Why have you never heard of such a chemical process? What other secrets have you never been able to understand?

 

*

 

And And And

 

And I got an email one day, from M, who told me they were closing the store, and so I should drop by soon to pick up the books I'd stashed away over the years. I knew I had to make good on them, i.e. pay for them, so I made a note of it.

And a couple days later, I found myself not a block away from the store, so I figured this was the time. And I was with N at the time, and I thought I could impress her with my wide-ranging interests. And so, I went to the store and I had a bit of a talk with M and L about old times and about the heyday of the place, back when people actually bought books. And time was getting a bit tight, since I'd left N in a café. And so I paid for the books--there were about twenty of them--and I promised to come back soon for another visit.

And I took the books in three bags, and they were good books, a bunch of quality materials, and I went back to the café, and I saw N.

 

*

 

And And And

 

And N was sitting there, in the café, talking to someone. (N was facing in my direction; I never did find out what male she was talking to.) And I sat down and watched, waiting for her to notice me, me and my three bags of books. And I waited and I waited. We'd begun a thing, N. and I, and I thought it was going places. She'd said she liked how I tasted, which was nice. And I was sitting there, waiting, reader to impress her with the wonderful books I'd been keeping in storage at the store. Maybe, as I was sitting there, I blinked or got distracted, during which time she noticed me sitting there; but otherwise, she didn't notice me. And then I noticed the bags had already started to break, so I needed something sturdier. Gracefully, I decided to let her continue her conversation--maybe it was her cousin or something!--and meantime get my hands on a couple of sturdier bags. And I remembered I'd seen a Chapters bookstore along the avenue outside, and I figured I could get some good cloth bags there. They hardly sold books anymore; mostly bags.

 

*

 

And And And

 

As I entered from the street, there was a café, like a Starbucks, so I went to a table and put down the three raggedy bags containing at least twenty-two books in total. And I spilled the bags open because the bags were so ugly: plastic white torn. And I shoved the remnants of the bags into my pockets and I looked at the books and I was impressed with myself for stashing so.

And I went off to looks for someone who could sell me two cloth bags. No-one looked like an employee. And I had to go upstairs and downstairs to find someone who'd sell me two bags, at checkout.

And then I went back to their café, but the books were gone. I asked, and I was told: "We though some eccentric bum had left them, and so we pulped them out back. Anyway, books are yesterday's news!"

And so, it had all come to naught. The books were gone, and I'd lost N.

KEE-RIST!

But I'd been wrong latterly. The guy had been N's cousin. And hadn't seen him in years.

And I told N about the lost books, and I married her.

 

*

 

23 & Me

 

The year '23 has nearly drawn to a close. The year that's almost closed has 365 days; in a couple days, the year will have 366. 2024 is highly divisible; all leap year are at the least divisible by 2 and 4, but 2024 equals 1012 times 2 and therefore 506 times 2 times 2 which equals 253 times 2 times 2 times 2 which equals 23 times 11 times 2 times 2 times 2. That's five divisors, which is rather a lot of divisors. I'm sure I've covered old ground here.

2027 will be our next prime number year. It's a long way off. I know I'll still be making matters much like this one. You know: falsely crazy. Unusual tales for unusual times, and still they'll be running on their internal logic, unprompted by myself. (I only build these machines. I don't know who turns them on and off.)

2023 is almost at an end, even though I am now in 2024. It's almost always in a rearview mirror, all of this. It all concerns times that are already out-of-date. I'm always behind the times. I can't catch up. I'll never catch up. Will you?

 

*

 

Old and New

 

It's out with the old and in with the new tonight. The past is done, and the future is unknown. The dying shall die, and the living shall live. Sweep out the old with a fancy new broom and throw out the old broom into the new garbage. Finish that bottle and fetch me another one. Break all the records for what good are records? Put some fresh sheets on that mattress and get me some new flowers that don't smell rotten. We shall sleep in a kind of peace tonight, with new dreams of our newness.