caveat emptor

Polituary: Lessons in Flagrante Delicto

We're having a summit. It's all downhill from here. Men in suits smile concealed blades, cut you good. Because healthcare, damn you, and also your god. We'll pay forever moral hazard I stab, hate you with my numbers. If half of us could kill the other half we could live forever on the bodies, eating our enemies like the climate, like animals and choice. And the sleeper cell awakes, weapons set for destroying the masses, marching covert advance against the marble column flags. None can stop the people in their halting decline. We will thunder your blood down over the pages of your proposals. For medicine and mortgage we fire you alive to dead, laughing at the fall of man. So far the fall of man. Blow the mushroom cloud of hope and blister sick in the burn baby burn. All for the children. God protect the beautiful, delicious children.

My point is simply this: Soon there will be a vote and evil must not prevail. Do your part for justice and love and light. Paint slogans on your naked body and make love to the process. We all know what's wrong. Do the other thing. Half of us are crazy, so the rest of us must rise up. Rise up, like the sea, like the falling snow, like the madman shoeshine. Help is coming, but not today.

Neither of those paragraphs managed to stay focused. I guess I shouldn't blame them. That would be the blame game.

Hello, friends. Are you for us, or against us. I know I am.

Later. Love.

The One About Physics

Einstein, or simply "E" as he referred to himself while rapping, was cocky about his prowess as an emcee. He considered himself exponentially greater than any other emcee. He talks much about this in his first album, "Specizzle Relativity", especially in the track E=mc². My favorite track on the album is I Before E My Ass!.

It's a beautiful day in this particular fold of spacetime. The light the sun emitted 8.317 minutes ago is at such an angle with the trees that they are casting long shadows across the patio outside. I'm sitting here wishing that you were close enough for your gravity to warp my time. I've always enjoyed the way you curve space.

Newton sits under a tree and a fig hits him on the head. Galileo sings "Swing Low" in the Pope's pokey. Physics happens to people all the time, and the results are often painful or awful. Let's study biology today.

Hello, friends. I trust you're relative.

Later. Love.

Talking Through the End and the Game of Love and Hate with an Invitation to Eisegesis

We talked through the end of the world. We were just so engrossed in small stories and universal truths that the end of the world came and went without us. When the conversation slowed and we began to imagine the tug of responsibilities that, unbeknownst to us, no longer existed, we rose to our feet, hugged and then looked around to see that everything was over. The world was done. There was nothing for it. There was an awkward silence for a moment because we weren't sure what to do, but then she suggested that we go for coffee and talk some more. I agreed. We went to this little shop downtown that we both love. It was a good talk, and it was good to see her there at the end of everything. I wonder what ever happened to her after that.

Love and Hate do not play chess. Love and Hate play solitaire. Sitting there, all alone, Love and Hate play solitaire. Read into this whatever you will.

The end of the world is a recurring theme in my writing, though I don't even believe in the end of the world. I barely believe in the beginning or the middle of the world. Nevertheless, there it is, a recurring theme. Read into this whatever you will.

Hello, friends. I hope you continue.

Later. Love.

A Cosmology of Words

You should be careful not to speak too quickly lest your words accidentally come out faster than the speed of sound and cause a sonic boom that will shatter your glasses and spill your coffee. There's plenty of time for all your words. Slow down a little. Gauge your words carefully. If you feel the need to speak quickly, first ask yourself if there's anything you're saying that can be left unsaid. There is no shortage of words in the world, though only you can speak for yourself. Remember that what you say doesn't matter as much as what they hear. A telescope, after all, does not send sight far out into space to see distant things. A telescope only stretches out the light that hits its surface. Reflections that don't make the journey are never seen. Talking is the same way. Our ears and minds are the telescopes, you are the Crab Nebula and your words are the light. This coffee shop is the universe. These other people are various stars and planets and alien civilizations. The lady behind you with the cleavage is a black hole and you are inside her event horizon. Nothing you say will ever reach me.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

What It's Like

It's like a dream, the dream where I call after you and you don't stop, though I know you hear. It's like waking up with a nail driven through your chest and thinking, "But, I don't even believe in the hammer." It's like your hands drop everything they carry because your mind insists there is nothing you can lift or grasp for long. Have you ever been there, insisting your eyes are wide open when you've glued them shut? Do you describe with conviction the world you imagine as though you can see through your own eyelids?

Perhaps we should go away somewhere. Pack up everything we don't need and bring it with us. Leave the practical world to get by. I'll sit on the beach with you, though you know I hate the sand, and you can face me. We'll only tell each other the truth, nothing between us but the warm, salty breeze blowing in off the ocean. The sun will set and the moon will rise. The tide will ebb and flow. Can you hear the birds? Where have you gone?

Sometimes the familiar comfort of being unwell draws us into its cottony grey. I'm learning, that's all, to recognize the pandering lies of my own mind. I have wellness in my hands, holding on tight.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

I'll Help You Paint It: A One-Act Manifesto

Color beneath the lines, right under them. This is the new creativity.

Beware the jabberwock, my love
He'll poke you in the eye.
Beware the Apple Snapple Tea
Seek out the inner thigh
Heed not the siren's flashy lights
Yield not the right of way
Don't worry much about rhyming
Or even about the rhythm of the verse thus far

Feel free to switch to prose halfway through if you suspect this might help you express your ideas more clearly. Content, after all, is more important than form, especially to robots. As for me, I've always found mayonnaise a little nauseating for some reason. She laughed and pushed her lush, brown hair back from her eyes. A leftover tear that had welled up in her bottom lid escaped down her cheek, but it was, by then, an anachronism. One joke and the crisis was averted. Her sadness was fading into the background noise of her life, where it would stay forever. "How did we get here?" he asked, but the Captain paid no heed. Peering out over the roiling sea and squinting in the salty spray, he said not a word. "We're in for a squall, lads" growled David Wooden Leg, who, inexplicably, had an eye patch but two perfectly good legs. Fear not the end of days, my friend

Heed not the warning signs
Don't fret the portents in the stars
Ignore the Shaman's bones
Instead, with steady heart
And the strength of your own empty hand
Tear down the future as soon as they build it
And erect your own monument from the scraps
And when you've finished
I'll help you paint it.

[fin]

Hello, friends. I'm glad you're.

Later. Love.

Street Smarts When You Hit It

People ask me all the time, "What are the secrets to a successful life?" Usually I've dozed off in the gutter, so I don't respond. Then they'll nudge me with the toe of their boot or with their fancy hand-carved walking sticks and I'll mutter something profane suggesting what they can go and do. Then they kick me stiffly in the gut and I curl up in a ball and groan and begin to weep. "Tell me the secrets of a successful life or I'll stab you in the kidney with a machete," they'll say. Then, mostly out of fear, I'll tell them. This is what I tell them:

• Once your hands are full, don't pick up anything else.


• Once your pockets are empty, stop giving things away.


• You aren't what you don't eat.


• If at first you don't succeed, maybe your idea was stupid.


• Maybe I like dancing about architecture.


• A fool and his money are soon murdered.


• If the world hands you lemons, eat lemons.


• You can tell if she loves you because she'll keep her eyes open when she lies to you.


• Until your dues are up-to-date please stop singing the blues. You're $4,832 behind on blues dues.


• Life loves you with a tough love, a little too tough sometimes. Life's kinky like that. And you've forgotten the safeword, haven't you?


• When all else fails, dance. It won't help, but we all think it's funny when you do it.


• We're all a little worried about you. I thought you should know.

You might be thinking to yourself, "These aren't the secrets to a successful life." Sounds like you're on your way.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well. Are you?

Later. Love.

Fan Fiction

At some point you have to give up, stick a party hat on your head and join the moron parade. You cannot fight the future. Sit here on the Lite Beer float with me and listen to the pop music. Eat the microwaved hors d'œuvre and watch the big plasma screen sitcom wall. Write fan fiction and save up for Disney World and clap for Steve Jobs. Welcome to the Holy Cathedral of the Fad Diet. All the world is a talk show, and we are merely the audience, with our autographed copies and our logo gift bags. Resistance is futile. Dial in your vote for the big season finale. Line up along the red carpet. The Now awaits. 30 Rock is starting. Shh...

Hello, friends. I'll see you there. I'll be the one in the party hat.

Later. Love.

Anne

I could never really come to terms with the idea that you were sick because you seemed, always, so well. You were, from where I was watching, all about family and home and friends, about books and puzzles and games, about parties and food and spirits, about fitness and sport and fun. You were never about cancer, even those times when we saw you down in the chemotherapy room, when you talked and joked with Susan until she fell asleep. I could never imagine, even in these last months, that you were weak, because you were just so strong, always only strong. It was only a few weeks ago - wasn't it only a few weeks ago? - that you wrested permission from your doctor to compete in tournaments with your tennis team again? I remember being astonished, and asking you, "Are you at 100%, competing at the level you did before?" And you said you thought so. And I believed you, because that's you. And now I cannot imagine that you have died, because you were always so alive, so very, fully alive. Everyone tells people who struggle against disease that they are an inspiration, but it isn't always true. You were an inspiration. You were amazing, daunting even, and I am shocked and saddened that you are gone. We loved you and we will miss you and we will always remember you. Goodbye, Anne.

Reflections. Water Life. Q&A to Follow.

I've been reflecting on the bathroom mirror. Why does it stare at me like that? Is there something it wants me to know? Sometimes I'll start to ask, but then it will make a motion like it's going to say something. I stop still and wait, but it changes its mind. I wish I could see what you see when you look in the bathroom mirror, see how it compares with what I see each day. I wish I could reach out and touch the cold, smooth fingertips of your mirror's hauntingly outstretched hand. What is it that you want from me? Is there something I need to know?

Underwater it never snows. Fish weather is mostly the same, every day. Down in the real world, down in the wet, there are wavy days and still days. Sometimes, though, the edge of the world above is brighter. Sometime the void above the world is dim. Sometimes the edge of the world grows hard and cold and you cannot peek out to the vast, empty nothing beyond the world, the abyss where monsters live. The turtles say there is another world out there in the void, a world without swimming. Fish are not fooled however. Fish know that the turtles that venture into the void never return.

I've almost got everything worked out, I think. One or two more cogitations and I think I'll have it all figured out. Then I'll start taking questions.

Hello, friends. Are you? (Answer that however you will.)

 Later. Love.

There Will Come a Sandwich

It is the future, a few years maybe, and you are waiting in line at lunch, waiting to order your favorite sandwich. You look good, a little worn maybe, maybe a little tired, but healthy and sound. You get to the front of the line and the young employee turns the full assault of her attention toward you. "Welcome to ___! What are we having?" she sparkles, showing all of her teeth. You order your favorite sandwich and water and, head tilted with aggressive cuteness, she gives you an empty paper cup and a red plastic square with "43" painted white on it and thanks you enthusiastically.

You fill your cup from a small faucet and take a seat alone there in that future lunch joint, a table for two near the sidewalk window, though you are expecting no one. There are crumbs on the table from some stranger sandwich and there is a small stack of unused napkins. These were left behind, presumably, by some recent eater, less messy than they had expected, though there are the crumbs. While you wait for your sandwich you think about your life, your recent past that is still, today, your future. You think about the people in your life, the people not in your life. You wonder how you got here, to this present future, this future present.

The sandwich is everything you wanted it to be. The bread is just that way. You know? That way you like it? And the ingredients are perfectly cold or warm or just the whatever you like. Small satisfaction wraps around you and you are reborn in the trivial glory of good lunch, a sandwich that works. Whatever else lies ahead, the joy and sorrow and loss and mystery, there is also that sandwich. It's going to be a good sandwich. Just hang in there.

Hello, friends. I trust you're hanging in there.

Later. Love.

The Field

Last autumn there were footprints in the snow that led out into the middle of the field across the street and then just stopped. Someone disappeared. You and your friends discovered it and looked around for clues. You all talked about it on the bus for several days. Then time passed and you forgot. It just slipped your mind for all these months. Now the leaves are turning and falling again, and the snow is back. Last evening, just before sunset, riding your bike home from video games at Lance's house, you saw a dark shape for a moment at the edge of the trees far across the field. It looked big, and it disappeared quickly. For some reason, looking out over that field as the shadows grew deeper, you remembered those footprints and a chill ran up your spine. You dropped your bike in the back yard and walked inside a little more quickly than usual, spooked. Before bedtime Rex wouldn't go out to do his business. He sniffed at the night air through the open door and just stood there. "What is it, boy?" He stood tense, listening.

Hello, friends. I have a funny feeling about that field.

Later. Love.

The Unexplained

I brought enough for everyone if anyone wants some. Anyone? There's plenty. I made it myself. I think it's pretty good. How about you? No? Are you sure? I brought enough for all of us, just in case. No? Okay. Well, that's cool. I'll just hold onto it, then. Let me know if you change your mind. There really is plenty.

Dirty water, is that all we are? The planet is 85% water, or something like that. We're 70% or 90% water too. I forget the actual number. There's water in the dirt and water in the plants and water in the animals. Just dirty water, really. If you evaporated all the impurities out of this world you could drink it. Dirty water, that's all we are.

Sometimes I get tired of these hands full of emptiness, so I put all the emptiness into my pockets. Then I look and there's more in my hands. So I put that into my pockets. And then again. My pockets are so full of emptiness at this point that I fear they may burst, spilling emptiness everywhere. I think I might start canning it and storing it in the cellar. I wonder how long it will keep down there. "That's where I keep my emptiness," I'll tell the curious children. "Would you like some? I've got plenty. Why are you running away?"

Hello, friends. I should probably explain. Yes. I definitely should.

Later. Love.

Jumper

She lives near the top floor of a tall high-rise in an apartment her closest acquaintance once described derisively as "post-pubescent and pre-informed", words she now has tattooed in Victorian script above her left shoulder blade, sad evidence of her willingness to vandalize herself. The homeless man who watches her come and go from the post of his eternal vigil beside the mail drop box on the sidewalk far below thinks of her as Asian, though she is half Puerto Rican and half American mixto. Her window high above the street is always open, symbolizing for you the endless opportunity funded for her by her wealthy parents with whom she never speaks. "I am an artist," she lies, when people ask her what she does. In truth, she occasionally throws pieces of bread out through the open window at the unsuspecting world, but she doesn't describe herself like this because it wouldn't impress anyone as much as a fantasy of art might. Her only art is standing naked with her eyes closed and her arms upraised in front of the blast of harsh, angry guitar raging from her expensive music system, art that her neighbors all hate because, all too often, they get to hear it and feel it but they never get to see it. The violence of this music rouses something less dead in her soul, something almost alive, almost vital, if unhealthy. This music gives her the scraps of resolve she requires to throw on something too revealing and head out past the homeless man to abuse herself around town, to let others have a go at her, to crawl home to the elevator that loves her. For her, this life is an apartment in an empty world, where she's not an artist, not even Asian. For her, death is like bread falling naked to the world below, guitar music fading away far above.

Hello, friends. I hope your feet are on the ground, so to speak.

Later. Love.

That Great, Good Someday

In that Great, Good Someday there will be no more pain. In that day we will gladly offer our everything to one another in exchange for anything or for nothing at all. There will be neither lack nor excess, only a boundless sufficiency, an abundance of just enough. You will kiss my lips and I will thank you. I will take your hand and you will smile. Men will grasp enemies in their embrace and release them as trusted friends. All the armies will surrender to each other, shake hands and then turn and carry the spoils of peace home to their mothers, fathers, children and lovers. In that Great, Good Someday brows etched with confusion and consternation will smooth and then crease anew with laughter. The lion will offer himself as food for the lamb. The four winds will stir and blow all heaviness away from everywhere, toward nowhere, a gale blowing only out and gone. The grass on this side will green and grow, soft and lush, and we will lay down together and sleep, the first night of forever. Dance, children, dance, and sing with me the songs of that Great, Good Someday.

Have you ever noticed all the beauty you've never seen? Look today into all the places you cannot see and your eyes will kiss your soul.

Hello, friends. I trust you're well. I'm just a sucker like that.

Later. Love.

Reality and Diatribe with Mushrooms

Reality left another message on my voice mail. He's been trying to get in touch with me for months now, and I keep ducking him. He was leaning against my car in the parking lot a few evenings ago, but I saw him from my office window, so I sneaked out the back way and walked to the bus stop. Reality seems to think I owe him something, but I contend that it's the other way around. If I own him some debt, I refuse to pay it. He can send his goons all he wants, I don't care any more. I'm done dealing with reality.

"I can imagine a creator," she said, "but I see no evidence that that creator wants anything specific from us. If some creator wants something from us, it should be more obvious. It would be unreasonable for a creator who created this vague, mysterious world to punish us for failing to fulfill some duty that creator didn't even bother to make plain."

"I don't want to discuss this," he said.

"And don't tell me it's written in some book. There are a million books. Which one is the one? How are we supposed to know? I contend that we live in a world created by an itinerant prankster and that he or she is long gone and never coming back. And no book was left behind, just this beautiful mess of a world, this never-ending joke."

"I didn't say anything about it," he said. "I just want to enjoy breakfast. Can we just enjoy breakfast? It's a beautiful morning."

She stared at him with evaporating intensity until her anger dissipated and her stare slid down from his eyes to his mouth to his chest and then down to the plate of pancakes that was growing cold in front of her. "It is a beautiful day," she agreed. "How is your omelette?"

"It's pretty good, especially the mushrooms."

He loves mushrooms.

Hello, friends. I hope reality is treating you well.

Later. Love.

The After

The ghost never admitted to herself that she was dead, although some part of her certainly knew it. She kept going to lunch with her friends at the tea room on Thursdays, though they didn't really include her in the conversation any more. She had been the life of the party before, but things had been different lately. She still took the bus to work every day, spent the morning in meetings, the afternoon trying to logon to computer terminals when people got up from their desks. She couldn't seem to make the mouse or keyboard work any more. Several times she'd gone down to IT and sat in the director's office and complained to him, but he ignored her. Tonight she was going out on the town. She wanted to try the new dance place her friends had mentioned. Who knows, maybe she'd even meet someone, someone who would dance with her, someone who might take her home, someone who would, at the very least, look her in the eyes and treat her like she existed. "It's just a funk I'm in," she thought. "I think it's the weather. A change of scenery will help." She couldn't feel the weather these days, and this worried her when she thought about it, so she didn't. Last night, for the first time, she hadn't even gone home. She'd just wandered around the city streets on the edge of a painful admission she couldn't bring herself to confront. All evening and night she gazed in through windows at people, a bad habit she'd picked up lately. She's standing outside the window now, wanting to come inside, wanting to talk, wanting to hold your face firmly in her hands and to force you to look deeply into her eyes and to hear you say, "Oh. It's you."

Hello, friends. Are you well? I hope so.

Later. Love.

Cold Notice and Lies About Eyes

I've given up on the ineffable. I cannot effin' figure it out. I've moved on, instead, to smaller mysteries. I wonder, for instance, why my car tells me when it's 37 degree Fahrenheit? My car doesn't tell me if it's 35 degrees, or 12 degrees or even four degrees. My car pops up a little message on the dashboard screen, however, if it's exactly 37 degrees outside. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this information, so I've started logging it into a little ledger. I record the date, the time, the mileage and the temperature, which is always 37 degrees Fahrenheit. I assume someone is going to ask me at some point, when I go in for service, "How often have you driven this car in 37-degree weather?" What other reason could there be? So, like a good car owner, I log it into the 37-Degree Ledger and keep driving. I may not understand it, but I'm sure it's important. Probably it has something to do with Kevin Bacon. I don't know.

I haven't opened my eyes in almost six months. I've just been staying in the ruts. This is not meant to be understood as a metaphor but a literal fact. Opening your eyes always costs something and I've been a little short lately. I certainly hope I typed this correctly, since my eyes are supposedly closed and all. It's not true, of course. I could see that you didn't fall for it.

The 37-degree notification feature on my car is, I'm convinced, a bad implementation of someone's idea. This cannot be what they intended, whatever the specification said. Read through the specs, engineer. Ask yourself this question, "If I were a normal human being, how would I want this feature to work?"

Hello, friends. Cold?

Later. Love.