WHAT WE KNEW
Write! Says my authority, addressing graduates from a podium, on the eve of a slumber party. Dreams hovering in the filthy air, trouble and toil polluting levels of reality – I might as well put pebbles on my tongue, going down to the sea. To say something there, to beach-goers – a crowd of tumblers, rolling, rolling down the river.
With a passel of ills set loose, still Pandora's jar was where she kept the genie, the hope of science. As in social distancing a head stand, and not done for the original reason. East is east, and west is west, and sometimes the two musically twang together.
A passel of steps embossed on the temple door fell off, a flight of leaves fluttering in fall. They swirled into a grumbling heap, not daring to recite familiar things, such as the rules formerly OK for plucking grapes.
A quest for lime juice, having lost its way in Crete, reassembed in a hug circle at the delivery bay behind the labyrinth. A crowd of protestors: “Quantum, Quantum, Entanglement, Set us free!” Such scenes are popping up more frequently. They are getting mixed reviews. A thief wearing a business man's fedora goes about his business, plainly mugging for the security camera. Why a selfie? Of course homies are watching as the evening news scarfs the free video, being called footage by an off camera narrator.
Anyone reading this might prefer to click off the categories, like beads on an abacus, or pearls on a rosary, or steel balls trickling down a pachinko machine, ignoring the real truth residing in small clicking sounds. It's the little things that weigh upon big ideas, isn't it. People who write like this should not be allowed to pull their thoughts out of a hat. It only begs the question: when does the rabbit poke its ears over the brim?
There should be some well ported statistics. How many desks with dominoes on the Senate floor, sorted by States of being, for instance. I do have the answer. But where are the folks who would vote for it? They would need a reason, such as pure water, or machines that credibly claim to be free of inhibitions. There are minerals to mined. There must be free trade, smoothly flowing money. Each dollar must be pushing on its neighbor, plotting an escape to the sea shore, there to produce triplets. At least. Ask not what your Senator can do for you. Multiply!
Suddenly life as we knew it is over. Slower threats to its demise – disappearing glaciers, disappearing islands – are forgotten like old sci-fi movies. To mention the bubonic plague would be censored, much as yelling “Fire!” in a packed theater. We must move safely to the exits, staying six feet apart, not thinking much about the term, or where to go. A vast expanse of stay-at-home awaits. Remember Parcheesi? Dominoes? Got booze? And all that was usual that did not cost money, which is now also getting scarce without going to work. Over and out.
To mention all of this at once, without an apology or digression, to pile on with the doomsday machine, endless war, the human use of human beings making ground meat, paying homage to infinite expansion, without a single curse or cry . . .
I drift down memory lane, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,” meeting old friends who scarcely recognize me. Life as I knew it already over. On the road not taken by others, already. Gone. Ghosts of Christmas past blackened by chimney soot. Cinderella with a gleam in her eye. The whole panoply over the rim at last. And what was lost?
All my forevers, standing knee deep, waiting in line. There is no hole in the wall small enough to prevent such knowledge from escaping. No finger in the dyke. I have known them, and they have known me, but now they are tattered flags in the wind. I am no flag. I am no wind. I am? Pro forma laughter. It is lonely.
As with the two-way mirror, while I see the universe and it sees me, how it remains quiet is a mystery. What me?
There is no personal space in redemption. The two are contradictory. And so it is with escapees from the labyrinth, blinking in the light, wondering how they got out. To speak of individuals like this is spinning wool from spider webs, making excuses. One mistakes the web for the warp of space, induced by gravitas, and drives on, bending light.
Those pebbles rolled around, ending up in a mollusk, forming pearls only discovered years later. By then not many cared to hold a conch shell to one ear, hearing the silence of infinity. But a nurse with a white nun's bonnet, pushing her baby in a three-wheeled stroller, perfectly understands, humming a soft tune.
Suddenly life as we knew it . . .
