HACKBERRY BREEZE

Drifting down, a sere leaf lights on my finger. A one way trip. Synchronicity. I had been musing where the psychedelic daymares went, that once seemed so important, then dope, next tobacco, booze, and then there goes the consumer trap. Gone. And in their place, peace.

Sere? Yaaaaas! There is freedom for my DNA, the cadences, rhythms, intonations of any source that resonates. I'm no Bible reader, not a student of any classical canon, though in just passing through these are unexpected echoes. Maybe this is the actual meaning of sprachgefuhl? Languages inform each other, linguistically speaking (the pun seems unavoidable), so my lexicon encounters a sort of Second Law of thermodynamics. So call it NeoRap?

I rather like that.

It's about heat, defined as a microscopic agitation of molecules. Of course words affect each other – Law, agitation, NeoRap – it veers towards the political. But for now, let's keep it scientific. The Second Law describes a one-way trip.

Agitated molecules affect their neighbors, imagine in a glass of water, and the disorder spreads throughout. Reaching maximum, that's it. Sort of like Humpty Dumpty after he's fallen off the wall and can't be put back together again. The thermodynamic story is, heat passes from hot to cold, but not vice-versa.

There is no thermodynamic law that describes disorder exactly going back to any previous state of order. Very well, then . . .

Yaaaaas! How about we brew a cup of coffee? I'll pour a cup, and the pot won't cool too fast. In fact, let's start a bigger pot and . . . how much disorder?

How large the oceans? Let's mull that. They comprise a heat sink, a really big solar water heater going on out there. We've got these green house gasses building up, keeping back heat that once radiated out to space. Now its agitating waters that were cold, but getting hotter as the disorder spreads. And a bigger problem is brewing. The heat in the air meets an increasingly hotter ocean, which previously was able to sink more heat, keeping the air relatively cool. Of course the sun still shines. Now the air heats increasingly faster. Synergy is happening, almost an economic dream, considering the rate of increase, but not quite, considering the disorder.

* * *

At the bottom of an elevator shaft, repercussions shout for nanosecond transactions, ghost riders roping secret deals in accordance with a Third Law. No one down there is thinking about how there are no trees.

On the street are towers, silicon pyramids peopled with souls searching NeoRap for a googleplexed map. A little tweak heard for the cranes, and gallons of sweat ordered for miles of steel helmets, belching curves ordered by benign computers that mock flesh with token trees in careful slots, and walk the aerial walkway's dizzy trail. People come and go, speaking of Starbuck's in latte tones as the sun deflates, scattering fireflies on cell phone screens.

City life, no ifs ands or bones about it, is for someone else. I decry the enterprise, grab as grab can, waft a glass of red wine. Who cares about a harvest moon when there's a waiter?

There is no justification for this. That's my point. It could be there was some hope. For a bigger pot? A way through the maze. A set of instructions. But we got what no one planned. Who would've thunk it, when counting things.

It seems more than likely my lack of utility appeals to a deeper instinct. Perhaps fundamental to the lexical DNA mined earlier, that moment when the usual excuses melded, settling out into a thin blue haze. If there is a point anymore, it points to that underpinning.

Point of order! Art for art's sake, held only by the fringes, has escaped! The title and justification of it, reasonable, immersed in a blue Tide having no part of it.

Is that abstruse or what? You can't spread peanut butter on it. Instinct is whetted and something is being said, Mr. Jones, that won't be slathered over with money, pressed into the service of gold leaf.

These lexi-blocks will be sufficient for you to build on further out. Einstein's garment of space-time speaks for gravity, so close.

But this might serve, on New Year's eve, to slip through the security check points. Just keep my hands on the wheel and pretend I really love the city. Do some small talk about the weather, and don't veer off onto any stuff about a solar water heater.

Another breeze. The leaf is gone.