Last night my daughter and her mom and I (her mom is my wife, you see) watched the television. We gloried in the almost cellular movement, seen from high in the air, of great herds pouring across the denuded dustbowl of the Kalahari in search of water. All they want is water! And when they’re not eating each other they seem so cooperative. I guess if they bitch and bicker their way across the Kalahari, none of them will get to the water, or it’ll take too long to get to the water, or some other thing ripe for allegory will transpire. Here on the ground it’s been a rough fortnight for the often graceless human animal, our anthropological manifesto poking inconveniently through the shiny veneer of civility we’ve managed, at great cost, to pull over our culture. This is a bad time to be a car in Baltimore, or a human of a certain color – and there are two unfortunate colors to choose from, neither one looking that great just now. Yeah, there’s more to it than a plaintive “Can’t we all just get along?” But it’s not a helluva lot more. Can we please move on from the Plasticene, or the Stupidlyobscene, or whatever this dumbass car-burning/secret spine-smashing epoch is called? What are we, animals? (hint: yes). Our opposable thumbs are supposed to exalt us in the animal kingdom, but so far have mostly resulted in fancier and fancier thumb-screws. Dear _____; please help us get our shit together, and while you’re walking around in your robe please make a nebula that looks like Charles. Nelson. Reilly.
Fortnight
Published by jef
The blood thrumming around the still-point of this light headache can be traced back to the first rain. That is, our blood just sort of drifts, like smoke, through time; with stops in the Cambrian, the Renaissance and so on. It’s an impenetrable, infinitely-layered heap of unknowing. Okay? (sighs) Yeah The World (as it’s called) is a hopeless lucid dream, but not the kind where you can leap off a building, flap your arms and take joyous id-flight. It’s the kind where you show up for just long enough to see yourself in a mirror and Know that You are Here. That apparently necessary bit of business having been addressed, thermodynamics or some other such fancy idiot enters with a tea towel over its forearm, takes you politely by the gnarled elbow and ushers you back into the soil, where the mostly irritating Circle of Life awaits to make of you a tree, then a shoebox, then wet mush in a landfill again. Bring me my slippers! Oh…never mind. But I’m not here to philosophishizzle. We’re doomed animals at the momentary top of a food chain of no eternal consequence. It feels like. That’s not meant to be a downer. Bacharach sprang from the Ur-ooze, so that recommends the place. Let us celebrate our moment in the hum de dum dum de dum de de de dum dum. View all posts by jef