THE VANISHING

In the metro garage, third floor, something clinked and the whole thing disappeared. It was unexpected. Before a sort of questionable recollection there had been large openings to look through. Trees, buildings, some birds. Any reasonable person in this event would check pockets for car keys. And find them gone.

But on the other hand, there would be a certain comfort in the disappearance of fees. Imagine a library visit, checking out a book which somehow gets lost, and no fine to pay.

Celebrate. It is civilization outdoing itself.

How could such magic be villainous? A rabbit out of a hat, the Mad Hatter, don't we gladly pay for stuff like that? Or, slap down another Go stone, think Duke Ellington's Chelsea Bridge. Take a step in Philip K. Dick's direction, The Matrix. Have we been programmed into existence?

All those people fumbling for missing keys, fuming. It's not villainous. But still, magic ain't what it used to be.

An iPhone message interrupts:

“Deep caverns of the night,” it says in a secure message, “bring stealthy feet and the presence of echoes. Magic wobbles down like a quarter dropped on the kitchen counter.”

This does not bode well.

And next a quiet vision. The clown with floppy soles announces: “Soul plays a temple bell. Words murmured by a crackling campfire are borrowed from a shout through a Grecian mask.”

But I'm not paying much attention. How real is it?

There had been reports during some past years, about twenty of them between the lies of high school and the war machine. In the last few tobacco/war years came dope, psilocybin, LSD, and zazen was well underway. It was a hazy rapture, and then . . .

An Orion sub hunter ended the party. Its catastrophic crash entered consciousness out of a clear blue sky before actually falling on the golf course, the flight path to Moffett Field. After which nothing has been the same ever since. It could be said, as in fact I'm doing now, that it stole a march.

And so now. What is now?

November's comes. So “fall back” we're told. The matter is ticking. Yes, time exists! This proves it, as deep as an oil well, or a water well or a well wisher filgreed in fantasies.

But it's all been sent back for auction.

With no rapture to sell, no ox to ride, no place to rest a head, this might as well be break dancing. And Polish hot dogs are still greasy good. A black forest in Germany has merged into the distance. Genes do not encompass this.