ARTLESS ART

The Palace almost camouflaged my '57 Chevy truck, which was manufactured just about when the Lawrence Expressway got its start. Drivers could see the Corn Palace, which had already existed for twenty years.

It was the best corn anywhere. And beneath the hand painted sign, laid out on stands, were fresh vegetables. The sounds from across the field amounted to something less than the swish of a fly swatter. Tract houses, that had sprouted up just a few yards from the cash register, occupied a different realm.

Traffic on the Lawrence was thin and seldom in 1958. Thirty years later, like shiny logs on wheels all jamming towards the lights, traffic was creeping. People could see each other. At the Benton Street light, a woman yelled through my passenger side window: “I love your truck – it just makes me feel so good!”

After a day's work, my truck coming home might have been mistaken for a fugitive from Antiques Road Show, sepia toned, days of yore reborn, an effect encouraged by the unlikely scaffold of four by fours rising up out of the bed. A pole was trussed across the two just behind the cab, making a lean to for lumber or a large ladder. An end of it was decorated with a coiled up green garden hose.

Out there . . .

Her moment of happiness, though I thanked her, was less than reassuring. How could she imagine an escape, more than 30 years ago, from the war machine? Slow as the line was moving, an explanation was out of the question. Did she, I wondered, give much thought to the machines? How much they cost. And if the most destructive get used, maybe she was on her way to buy eggs?

In the traffic . . .

So far is this from writer's block that, on the contrary, call it a mill run jamboree. The first one to snag is a dock for others.

Before tossing this on the cutting room floor, hoping for a better plot, consider jack booted goose stepping scout hats, cradling nuclear bazookas. Stir in an olive on a swizzle stick for the martini. The jar will phosphoresce, producing cold light for torture cells, testing the dregs of patience for rats trying to exit the sinking ship, incense shrouded peaks overlooking crowded shores.

By chance, those with other shapes will just have to float away. It's not pretty, not polished, like rocks in a tumbler.

0 O 0

As usual during a mill run, it's early AM. I marvel at how Frankie and Twinkie manage to play without harming each other, here to wrestle and bat each other around. Frankie jumps up onto the windowsill and looks behind the curtain. Not a sound. Nothing. Twinkie takes her turn on the sill and – the great mystery of night.

They're back, to scuffle round my feet. Frankie drowses off, Twinkie washing her paws. It could not be more peaceful. To smush a metaphor (author's privilege), Frankie is sawing logs.

Big wheel keep on turnin'

Proud Mary keep on burnin'

Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river

I am the antipoet.

I wave my wand and reveal that time is an afterthought. With cats like this, just imagine all the novels that got away.

Precognitive knowledge, in my experience, is that which does not move from place to place but exists all-at-once, in whatever regions or domains may be defined. Various aspects of a moment are teased out by the usual five senses, operating in electromagnetic fields, breaking the all-at-once into manageable definitions. Patterns and laws thus discovered are the basis of the five electrosenses (author's jive). Individual minds analyze and store electromagnetic interpretations. Since the basis of these is the same in various individuals, the co-ordinates of electrosensory experience are held in common, which allows for sharing and comparison amongst individuals.

While sharing the results of electrosensory experience, minds can also function without them. In not concentrating on electrosensory experience, the function of consciousness is not limited by electromagnetic constraints, which operate at the speed of light. Then consciousness can be affected by all-at-once instantaneous awareness. The future, a construct of analytical electrothought, is simply an afterthought. In Einstein's world, which does not allow for all-at-once, time is relative to motion, measured from place to place. Simultaneous events in a given system of co-ordinates are not simultaneous when measured in a system with different co-ordinates.

Even as five electrosenses exist in the all-at-once mind, they divide it for individual purposes. The larger mind, which I call Self, is not superseded or lost. Four of the electrosenses require molecular interaction: taste, touch, smell and hearing. The fifth, usually considered superior, is a direct extension of the brain and works with nonmolecular photons, a shorter route for this electrosense. Faster and less complicated, vision is at the apex of a worldly hierarchy established by the patterns and laws of electrothought.

The Self tends towards complete realization by individuals. Our electrosensory perceptions are tinged with inclinations of the Self, affecting our choice of descriptions. The least material electrosense gives rise to experiences expressed as visions. A gourmet meal is heavenly. Taste and touch become out of this world. These nudges resonate the patterns and laws which comprise our electrosensory basis.

The Self doesn't run You Tube ads.