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Conversations I Never Had #6
We sat there on the bench beneath a streetlamp that hummed and spat in a steady electric drone. The little puddle of light at our feet that’d been flickering dim since we first sat down, now finally gave in and buzz and puddle both were swallowed instantly by the outer dark.
‘Look’ she said finally ‘its like this...the conciousness of a leaf has a sacred urge to be just that - a leaf. Right?’.
‘Sure’ i said, sounding as prickish as possible. I could just barely make her face out in the dark but could tell from her voice she’d had enough of my sullen company.
’Yes its simple. Yes its very direct.
But its not so much different from yours or mine. It’s a sense really - all this business of conciousness, like sight or sound.We see and hear just enough - just exactly what we need to to get by in our own skins. Thats how life learns itself. Its taken millions of years, but all the conciousness spread out over all the world, every bit of it, it all hatched from the urge of one single solitary cell. There may have been others before it, but that one was the only one that listened. And definitely the only one that answered'.
I didn’t respond. The puddle appeared again at our feet just as suddenly as it’d left and the streetlamp resumed its buzzing.
‘Anyhow’ she said ‘one things for goddamn sure’ she took a long drag from her cigarette and stared out at some unknown point in deep of night. ‘If we all started out the same... if everything was born from some singularity sat way back there in the beginning - then its likely enough we’ll finish out that way too.’
She stood up to leave then, but just before walking off she turned back and stared at me hard for a minute.
‘I suppose thats exactly why my dear boy,’ she said, and slapped the boot dangled across my knee ‘your isolation is so fucking absurd.’
Notes from a Generation #3
They tore it down i guess
it was
73 maybe
Or 4 - don’t know for sure
I was only a boy then
and hadn’t yet learned to
scratch out life
in these deep etched years.
But
America
was big in those days -
Grown-full with herself and
propped up there
fresh on the worldhead like an
Iron Crown -
Big enough she could take GodSteps
backwards and
from the shallow end of
Nothing
clear a live earth to a dead moon
in
OneGreatLeap
That’s why I’d say -
If i had to give some account of it
Why they’d have rubbed it out from skyline entirely
without so much as a
streetlamp or hitching post left
to say it was there -
As though the town itself had been
born directly to that
slate-grey drab modernity -
Born and then served back
to itself
in hard blank cubes -
Because everything back then
American
had to be as big as the
idea of itself -
Everything charged through
with our own
arrogance
In that sense
you could say it was a matter
of destiny -
that the very nature of our
national identity
would’ve
necessitated the need to
wipe the old world
out clean
to make way for the
NewComingBIG -
The Big industry
The Big bombs
The Big cars -
Even the towns couldn’t
bare the thought of
small
especially the small ones -
and the smallest thing in
a small town was
anything
Old
But who could’ve known
in those days?
Who could’ve
possibly?
Before the interstate
rolled its slick tounge out
over Appalachia -
Before The Walmart clawed
itself
up from the dirt like
a newborn antichrist-
Before the tobacco and cotton was
ripped from the earth-scalp
by the roots
and the fields laid back
thick
with rolling oceans of corn
and soybean
Before the TV screens filled our
homes and closed our doors
shut
Before the Internet rendered
knowledge
arbitrary
Before we were all reduced
to inventory
Before we were Big
when we still
free
to...