MiND CITY

A commute through the King's suburb, wavelets tumbling down the bumble seat, and my steeple chase doppelganger is well nigh the moon. If lightning should strike on a dark and stormy night --

Rather than drinking in a pub, getting confused, a London Cabman should be ready to go. The first Cabman's Shelter, built at St. John's Wood in 1815, was no bigger than a horse and carriage. More than 60 were later built, all the same size, all painted Dulux Buckingham Palace Paradise 1 Green. On my MGB, it's called Racing Green. And only those with The Knowledge (every street, landmark and route), demonstrated through a rigorous examination, may enter.

Just 13 Shelters remain. Now things unprecedented and untethered have appeared throughout the City. Flotsam and jetsam, Jack in Boxers, surfboarding beavers all paddling out, looking for something else to do, catching up is not enough. It's embarrassing.

The Knowledge --

Mr. Finch says, Cheap! Through that beady eye shines the unKnown missing link.

For instance, to contain millions of degrees Kelvin, as happens routinely in stars, a current project aims to sustain such a fusion reaction. Here on earth? Fusion power will outproduce its predecessor, putting nuclear fission and its toxic products out of business. Fusion fuel, deuterium, is harmless and widely available. It can be distilled from any form of water.

My bird friend, though he doesn't realize it, has spoken truth to power. Just compare the Manhattan Project, which made a leap when war trumped other considerations. Fusion power needs that kind of funding. The Knowledge needs an upgrade.

Money is power, or the other way round, but always fused. The familiar equation that, so far, has mapped civilization.

Merriam-Webster, on power:

Sense 1 a (1) ability to act or produce an effect

(Politicians do make stuff happen.)

Merriam-Webster on money:

Sense 5 a persons or interests possessing or controlling great wealth,

politicians at the beck and call of money

(Politicians are controlled by money.)

East is east and west is west, and the twain, as we've heard:

“Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle

shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into a plutocracy,

and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make

a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function

for which they were invented.”

--Mark Twain, in Eruption

So is there anything to get from writing any of this? It speaks, perhaps, to an unlikely audience. Some people whistle while they work. But writing is silent. From time to time I have wondered about this, laughing at the notion of time, taken as a whole. The Knowledge springs forth. Purple blooms that Big Bee likes are in the backyard. Here he is, bumping into me as ever, and we have conversations. I love being crazy.

Big Bee, it would seem, is the focus. Sort of. But no. It's the flowers.

In the dark and cold of winter came an idea to prune, as I would a rose, the plant for which I have no name. A dubious idea, but I did it. I am no horticulturist. And now the plant is screaming, purple! Purple! Bursting with blooms, much like a rose. Love it. It's the color, stupid! The idea with its own purpose, dig it or not. Prune it or play dead. Call it emptiness or something going on that's doing its own dance. Just try it on for a time – fill in the chorus.

The curtain falls over an invisible scene that has no props yet. All the world's a stage.

Here comes a truck load of dopplegangers that just happened in, flying every which way. Maybe all the stuff Big Bee can't imagine has become radioactive. Or before that maybe all the people not reading this will realize we don't need to multiply so much anymore, multiplying to the bottom line, that place where anything not leaving money drops off, beneath notice. Gotta slow down. And that diesel engine pumping down the street, all the little birdies going tweet, tweet, tweet – fumes! Pollution. It's not green house gas, as anyone can see, blowing black out the stack. Not little white lies. The new abnormal was established last fire season, so more fire trucks this year, getting pre-positioned. Electric fire trucks? PG&E has announced it will cut power during high wind events to curtail sparking the tinder forest, and lawsuits. Or in homeless tents or offices with coffee temples, it all adds up down the bottom line, then whisked away like chips scattered on a roulette table where the owners always win, and slowly “mortgage” penetrates like red pomegranates and fills the flooded plain, tornado alley, and I'm trailing out zero.

Swamp gas Will-o'-the-White House, what a whizzer, compare just any supernova. And we got here how – me and Big Bee, He and She, the mountain lion on the corner displaced by civilization? These writerly things are a setup, right? We'll end this . . .

Damn! Got away, can't stop it. That Eden story, rocks and trees, get the poetics out of it, we are it. This backyard, don't you know . . .