CROW'S RHUMBA WHEEL
Some terms, he cawed, are a view from above: Business is mired in the quicksand of infinite growth, dangerously ignoring less material aspects of life. OK, but these skirt realities on the ground, such as being caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Closer in, the price of a cheese burger, or maybe if there will be one at any price. There's no real term for what's happening. If there is, he clucked, let's hear it.
Here – we have the latest but not final pandemic, dwindling work, shortages of food, catastrophic weather, leaders without conscious or consequence, rising seas, floods and migrations, levee and crop failures, people with nowhere to go --
It's all getting dumped at once. What is clear: The old rules don't apply.
While in his tree, waiting for a turn at the Ferris wheel, Crow got Hitler's dream,
Arbeit Macht Fly!
Long days he'd spent atop the three mast schooner, brooding in the Crow's Nest, so deviously named. With not much to be seen during the middle passage, and the stench of slaves kept below deck, the mind journeyed on its own. The ship creaked, a sound with peculiar resonance that blended with the wind. One might go with it, forgetting a crow's place.
Unexpectedly it became a hunch that leapt free, laughing at itself, and from that moment would admit neither past nor future..
The Ferris wheel creaked. It was a schooner again, blowing in the wind, and it would be Crow's very first leap.
Though a far cry as the crow flies, by a stretch of the imagination, the madness of crowds below will resemble Ramen noodles.
Noodles squeeze together. They are herded together into a bowl with plenty of company, some finding a larger purpose in this. They swell as they cook, filling the bowl ever more tightly. Changing position becomes impossible.
It has to be admitted that instant noodles only seem that way. How long to make the paste? To squeeze it into noodles? Fold and dry them, insert into a package, which needs to be printed with a suitable advertisement. And don't forget the packet of seasoning.
The madness of crowds – what beliefs melded to form a single purpose? How were they packaged? When the mass comes together, how is it that no one can undo it?
The madness is when no one wants to.
Crow was airborne again.
Pundits and the man in the street might have forgotten. Remember him? With a goatee, glancing down the wharf towards the light at the end of the sea, wearing a green snood.
The woman on the forty third floor hears her phone. The connection seems impish, a breeze educated in static, sharp edged flakes of snow and somehow a Speed Graphic camera with a visitor in the film holder. A latent image. She wonders if, after all, that haystack dream might light the day. If it is permissible, on average, for three or four such visits.
The candy stripe barber pole outside on the street below swirls with regularity. It is almost hypnotic. Green snood, green fields, bona fide fields of grain, all in scratchy connection. Light at the end of the day, into the beyond. The image was only waiting for this moment, a time of interviews with likely subjects long forgotten. Yes, the haystack was real, simply mistaken for a dream.
Crow's gone. What to do?
Either way, some overarching insight is missing. And it won't arrive until the decks are cleared. It's simple as just letting the mind settle down. Whatever comes up, let it pass. What's left is what's always been. Don't worry about a name.
It will be sort of comforting, like returning home after a long journey. There will be no explanation.
