On the march to nothing
1.
My line of sight bisected by a steep cinderblock-gray eyesore, new condos, new construction, new hope for some, I suppose. But the order of the day is extraction. We exist only as interchangeable units, valued to the extent our mineral deposits can be mined by the banal predators specializing in such drudgery.
But what can I argue against now that hasn't already formed its opinion of me? Left-right, left-right. And not a word, not a sound, from any animal seems to make the difference we're hoping for. As my reactive chihuahua makes clear each time he snarls and pulls toward another dog, which responds in kind, we create our own universe in the way we approach it, a fact as bewildering and irritating as it is true. A fine arrangement, convenient in many ways. But there's more to learn, plenty more than that to forget.
"Approach your thoughts like an airplane passing overhead," I'm told, and already I'm lost in a cold-gray childhood, silver station wagon stubborn, refusing to start, ignition whining in an iced-over landscape of squat suburban homes.
How much further can I go? The rules continue to change, undercutting the previous era, which was just football and anxiety, then books and anxiety, then alcohol and etc. Left-right, left-right. What comfort can be found in the end but the end? I use what I can, as we all do, for whatever warmth it provides, for however long I can stand it.
2.
Not that it matters too much because how could it? Bones even break and repair in the time it takes me to fully catalogue each detail underwriting my ho-hum fatigue. Pointing out that we're all actors here and my mom laughing it off, Thanksgiving, 1998.
No, I made that up, though it could be true and in many ways that's enough. Aluminum siding samples in the garage, minor function of a gyrating empire groping toward collapse that will surprise even those who have expected it for decades, like me, who forgot even another result was possible. The Treasury ransacked by corporate bureaucrats and financiers and military contractors and consultants. And here I am, at 41, knowing nothing, ignorant of basic skills.
Once the abstract economy goes I lose the privilege of food and shelter is what I'm saying. But was it a sickness all along, our hungers? Curated and polished and refined, the all-consuming definitions we impose upon the world, which exists beyond our five senses and hallucinations in ways we can hardly fathom.
I know. I know what's asked of us is far too much and also not nearly enough. As I work toward wrapping this up I've lost the motivation to continue, though it's not as if the voices stop, and what good are the arguments if we can't even sleep?
The signal is faint in the background of the avalanche pouring boulders into the river, but it's there nonetheless. Cracked drywall, white dust on my jeans. Whirlpools spinning against the underside of my skull.
3.
But the lakes won't dry out before we do, sick again, cynical in our intellectual mischief. "How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulchre?" asks John. Late August, overheat of daylight balanced by cool night pulled into the windows and scattered in every direction by an intricate network of fans, blunt in their purpose, half-effective, much the same as me. Trouble is the warnings sound near-ecstatic now in their prophecy. The bad trouble, the bad room, the one in the back of the house that smells of cigarette smoke and perfume samples.
If I knew what to do I wouldn't be sitting here fingering a yellow notepad like it could someday love me back. The only constant is the fear is real, even when irrelevant, while I blend into the background behind the counter, attached to an idea of what I mean.
Soon the season will change, then it will change again and again. This is not new information but it is useful. As all things turn so too will you and I and everything else, without concern for us. Without regard. And that's hardly a relief until you stare long enough to realize the equation happens between the numbers as the music happens between the notes and our lives happen between the moments we grasp at and declare with absurd confidence that it defines us. No, there is nothing new here, nothing new at all, because here there is nothing.