American Fez

Memories of Magma

Whenever he was angry, which was often, my colleague Paul became a human volcano. His head would visibly vibrate as red mist filled Paul's infuriated mind and fiery streams of lava poured from flared nostrils. We joked that his bulging eyeballs were visible from space and that he needed a therapist who was also a gifted seismologist. Meanwhile, the targets of Paul's temper were burned into ash figurines like those on display at Pompeii. Everyone in the office knew when Paul was pissed off. He was a Krakatoa amongst the cubicles and we could see the red mist rising from seven desks away.

The tiniest transgression of Paul's unwritten laws could provoke an eruption. An intern named Janice was once guilty of carelessly leaving an empty coffee cup on the conference room table; a terrible crime resulting in plumes of red mist and knee-deep pools of steaming lava followed by a thirty minute harangue. Such over-reactions to trivial offenses led to a culture of fear and employees would take extreme measures to escape the all pervading wrath of Paul. Nobody wants to be browbeaten, intimidated, and harassed first thing in the morning. It was easier to avoid him, which created chronic productivity problems since Paul was unfortunately one of the biggest cogs in our operating wheel. He was certainly the noisiest, which just made everything ten times more difficult than it already was. Compared to Paul's hot red mist, my own anger was merely a brief exhalation of breath on a window pane, quickly wiped away with a wave of the hand. Consequently, Paul's assistants would confess their errors to me rather than risk instant immolation by him. Should Paul ever discover these errors, I would attempt to appease the volcano God with a sacrificial offering of buying him lunch. A small price to pay for preventing destruction of our entire office by a rain of burning rock and Paul's skull collapsing into a caldera.

Of course, in our world of modern HR, Paul was long gone before you could say 'Lawsuit.' He was sent away for endless diversity training and anger management courses, never to return. The volcano was no doubt made dormant, possibly by prescribing antidepressants be tossed into its crater on a regular basis. That's probably all for the best. Nine to five were the most miserable hours of the day thanks to Paul. I suppose he was the quintessential Angry White Male we hear so much about these days. Whatever the socio-politics of the situation, I must admit we are better off without him. It's like Spring around the office now. Our little acre still doesn't bear that much fruit, but the weather is pleasant and the young people working at their desks are no longer afraid. They call me 'The Dinosaur' behind my back, although it is said with a smile rather than a sneer because they know I'm a nice old Barney and not a wannabe Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Flow

Old Heraclitus claimed no man steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Today, of course, no sane man is going to step into that same river once, never mind twice, because the water is toxic or full of flesh-eating bacteria and various other slimy dangers. But he will probably be the same man since we have lost the capacity to change in any meaningful human way.

We update the software on our computers and machines but not the software in our own consciousness. In fact, 'our own minds' will soon be an obsolete concept: as useless as a floppy disk, as slow and ponderous as a dial-up modem, as inexpressive as a broken laptop screen. Our artificial intelligence avatars will think and do everything for us in the future. I always used to joke about people surviving death as brains attached to electrodes in jars of formaldehyde, but obviously our actual brains are no longer necessary in that equation. 

So where does that leave Heraclitus' aphorism now? It seems to me that his man stepped into the river the first time but was unable to get out and simply drowned. Meanwhile, the river flows remorselessly onward.

State of the Art, 2023

If this blog were a book it would be out-of-print, missing its dust-jacket, crack-spined with yellow and coffee-stained pages. The author and subject matter obscure, its publisher long-since bankrupt. Mis-shelved on the bottom stack of a cobwebbed aisle in the old library that is never open.

Of course, the same could be said of Christ Stopped At Eboli, The Worm Forgives The Plough, The Little World of Don Camillo, the cartoon collections of Osbert Lancaster and the Reverend Kilvert's Diary, so at least my unloved book rubs covers with real literature. If I'm honest, however, this blog is not really much like a book.

It's more like your black sheep uncle's home movies: a bird's nest of badly spliced, scratchy 8mm film unspooling itself from rusting metal reels, dumped into a cardboard box and exiled to a dark corner of your parent's attic because it's just embarrassing footage of the family that nobody wants to watch. And that ancient, stupid projector is broken anyway. 

Then again, my blog has much in common with the works of a weekend watercolorist, whose pale green landscapes and pastel beach scenes are given an annual albeit ill-attended show at the local gallery. Here is a view of Rockport harbor, only $250 framed but still unsold.

Or perhaps a student orchestra featuring a big bass drum player who can't keep time, a trombone player who finds it funny making fart noises, and a lead violinist with a broken arm. Listen to their performance of Mahler's fifth symphony that could be mistaken for feeding time at the zoo.

For the most part,  however, these short electronic paragraphs are simply a letter sent to distant galaxies in a rocket ship called The Internet. Ah yes, the eternal hope of discovering life on other planets. But, alas, The Internet is a malfunctioning satellite, doomed to lose contact with mission control, destined to drift through space and time for eternity, drawn inexorably towards a black hole where they will be sucked into parallel universe where people can neither read nor write. Space junk, in other words.

The Karl Marx Diet

We learnt about the food chain in school, with the help of directional arrows and colorful diagrams. Maybe I drew a beard and glasses on the poor organisms languishing at the bottom of this chain. It was the sort of thing I did back then.

Later, at the same school, I read Hamlet's speech about the common man who eats the fish who ate the worm who ate a king, and realized that the food chain is more like an ouroboros (which I knew about from extra-curricular reading).

These days, I'm mostly concerned with a different kind of food chain: the food chain of business. A hierarchical measurement of employment status that runs from boardroom predators down to the prey in their cubicles. I see myself reflected in a computer screen and observe that life has drawn a beard and glasses on my anxious face.

And I can't even find consolation by eating the fish that ate the worm that ate the CEO because the founder of this company had himself cryogenically frozen. 

Utility and Dignity

How gratifying it must be to be useful. As functional as a fork, for instance, or merely pleasingly decorative like a fish knife, which can nevertheless claim its specific purpose in a dinner service, if only seldom utilized. 

Me? I'm not sure I have a purpose anymore and I'm probably too old to be repurposed. Much renovation and refitting of my working parts is required. There is not enough oil in all the world to stop that incessant squeaking whenever I rise from my desk. No-one would reissue a lifetime warranty for me now. Behold the obsolete man. He still has a blog, even. How far past his sell-by-date is that?

The lamplighter, the chimney sweep and me, creeping down the street into a sunset obscured by newly built but as yet untenanted office blocks. Soon everyone will join our lugubrious conga line of irrelevance. I am reminded of the Dance of Death scene that ends Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, except our characters are dwarfed by a digital cloud of Artificial Intelligence. Downloadable doomsday for the common man.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, so the saying goes. But the old dog doesn't want to be taught your stupid tricks anyway. He was born to chase rabbits and herd sheep as was quite happy with that role. He's sick of straining at the leash in this open-plan dog pound. He's tired of growling at the printer-repair man. He's just so fed up of being fed client scraps from the conference room table. Frankly, he would rather bite your hand off when you give him a patronizing pat on the head. Beware of the dog.

Meanwhile, maybe I can eke out a living as a designer of artisanal fish knifes. Sensuous silver-plated blades ideal for flaking slivers of flesh from branzino, rainbow trout, and sea bream. Perhaps not the most useful late career path I could explore but better than slaving away in the so-called gig economy. 

Into The Inter Zone

The Emergency Room in this hospital reminds me of a refugee camp dumped in the middle of a TV news control center. Prostrate patients grimace and moan amid a million screens broadcasting their latest blood pressure updates like the NASDAQ stock ticker. "We're still waiting to go over to Dr Unction reporting live from Cardiology. Meanwhile here's Nurse Clog with today's vital signs."

And me? Well, fortunately I'm just a minor human interest story about a spell of dizziness; the sort of low key snippet the anchor man might deliver with a wry smile and raised eyebrow. Frankly, they may not even have time for me if the ambulance stringers rush in with more urgent dispatches. I guess that's a good thing for me. But it also means I don't know when I'll be able to change the channel and go home. The downside of not being a critical case is being wheeled off to one side and told to wait.

And that's why, despite all the pulsing technology, the ER feels like a refugee camp. I'm waiting and waiting and waiting for the doctor to arrive and stamp my exit visa. Someone in scrubs on a previous shift said he'd see me hours ago, so long ago that I've lost track of whether it's day or night, whether it's still today and not tomorrow already. It's easy to fall into a sense of creeping despair when staring interminably at the hospital ceiling. I must keep thinking of my saline drip bag as half full and not half empty otherwise I'll never get out of here. 

And eventually the doctor does appear, bathed in a shaft of light at the end of the corridor like a great prophet whose second coming was always promised to the faithful but always somehow delayed until now. And like all great prophets, he is the bearer of Good News: my blood work is deemed satisfactory and I am finally handed discharge papers allowing me passage into the land of the healthy where I can make a new start.

Wish You Were Here

I expect too much from the ocean. Its surface, after all, surely implies some sort of stage upon which the moon's theater of waves is performed: a giant squid rises from the deep; the Flying Dutchman's prow emerges from the mist; a mermaid models the latest in scallop shell lingerie. At the very least, standing at the water's edge should provide me with a transcendent experience, inspiration for a poem or the urge to return to my oil paints and easel. But, alas, the sea remains relentlessly aloof and does not speak to me. Its mysterious depths do not flow into an estuary of my soul despite the old mystic's suggestion that they should. Confronted by its tides I am nothing but human driftwood, an object of scorn for the gulls, a companion of beached bivalves, a brief moment of salted supplication quickly lost in trails of indifferent kelp. I think it's time to get an ice cream cone.

The Petty Juvenile Inside

Within the walls of the Citadel of Eternity, beneath the towers of the Palace of Life, at the furthest end of the Hall of Now, there is a small Bathroom of Anxiety where I spend most of time.

"Are you going to be long in there?" demands the Gatekeeper of Experience, persistently knocking on the locked door. 

"Just finishing up," I lie, before returning my attention to the unforgiving Mirror of Uncertainty screwed into the wall.

"Well don't be all day," the Gatekeeper replies. "You've got things to do and places to go."

I instantly respond with a Fake Flush of Apathy then turn the Faucet of Irritation on full blast, wasting as much hot water as possible. Stupid Gatekeeper of Experience, I tell the Mirror of Uncertainly, he's so annoying.

"I'll be waiting for you in the Antechamber of Today," the Gatekeeper tells me. "If you're not there in five minutes I'll leave without you and you might miss some good opportunities to do some really great stuff."

If only he could be less vague and offer up a few concrete examples of 'some really great stuff' once in a while.

As it is, sooner or later I have to leave the Bathroom of Anxiety, head for the Antechamber of Today, and just hope for the best as I wander the winding streets of the Citadel of Eternity with toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

Night of the Shooting Stars

A meteor shower of mixed nuts makes a wasteful trajectory through the kitchen's atmosphere. This absent-minded, clumsy God was clearly too cavalier when unsealing the bag. And there, crouching on that unswept galaxy of a hardwood floor, is a black hole disguised as a dog who will devour this manna from Heaven faster than you can say 'Exodus.' 

Of course, it was the pistachios, cashews and pecans that made landfall and were slobbered up within seconds. All that remains for me is an inedible heap of a few paltry peanuts, some scrawny walnut halves and those withered almonds that always seem so unappetizing. So what is this son of Jeremiah going to nibble on now? It's a cosmic catastrophe of Biblical proportions. Famine in Pharaoh's Egypt was a cornucopia compared to this cause for wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I only wanted a modest repast while watching La Notte di San Lorenzo, a handful of salty morsels to tide me over before dinner. But my journey to the promised land of pantry snacks has proved a failure and I return to the TV lounge empty-handed and still hungry. The dog, meanwhile, no fan of Italian cinema, celebrates her good fortune by barking at the back door to go outside. After all, who knows what other wonders might have fallen from the sky while her foolish owner was staring at his screen.

Turning The Tables

I enjoy listening to recordings of great singers, but as I get older I have much less patience for listening to what they're actually singing about, which is often either profoundly vacuous or just plain moronic. For some reason, even when he was older and wiser enough to know better, Frank Sinatra was quite content to give voice to the insipid concerns of a callow youth, an embarrassment to himself and his audience. Surely a man in his seventies should be performing romantic ballads about sex after hip replacement surgery and the difficulty of delivering sweet nothings to a paramour who is deaf. Golden oldies like My Way, if truly golden, would contain details of how the balding singer pays his mortgage on a fixed income and how he hopes to cope with rising healthcare costs. "I planned for retirement and I did it my 401K waaaaay!"

In fact, my response to the lyrical content of the so-called Great American Songbook is invariably "act your age" and "pull yourself together," followed by the spine-chilling screech of a record-player needle being peremptorily removed from a vinyl surface. Consequently, my sensitively erudite ears no longer need to suffer through such auditory indignities as Moon River and Blue Moon: so many moons, so little emotional maturity. These days, my appreciation of music is strictly limited to songs in foreign languages I don't wholly understand, mostly heavily orchestrated French and Italian melodrama. Who knows, for example, what Gino Paoli or Charles Trenet are warbling about? It is probably more juvenile than the worst drivel of Rodgers and Hammerstein but I shall never know, so I can simply sit back and enjoy the swirling sounds without feeling like a cretin.

Formaggio & Function

Cheese, like flatulence, is an evergreen source of ribaldry. The mind immediately recalls the episode of the cheese in Three Men In A Boat. No doubt The Canterbury Tales contains an amusing anecdote about ripe Cheddar. Going that far back, you could possibly invoke Boccaccio also, although the Italians rarely find the subject of food funny. Mozzarella is a serious business and Parmesan a matter of life and death. So, on second thoughts, there are probably no cheese jokes in The Decameron. 

The same can be said of Dante, obviously: nobody is condemned to the Inferno for making inappropriate remarks about Gorgonzola, at least not in the translations I've read. And there are zero wry observations about Bel Paese in Pirandello, Calvino or even Umberto Eco (you'd think there might be). Only the filmmaker Pasolini attempts cheese humor, and it's gallows humor, literally, since the protagonist of La Ricotta dies on the cross from indigestion.

Similarly, French literature is devoid of laughs when it comes to cheese. Nothing in Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo or Flaubert. Proust chooses an item from his local boulangerie rather than the nearest fromagerie for the witty opening scene of Remembrance of Things Past, an English title I much prefer to the lugubrious In Search Of Lost Time. So once again it falls to a filmmaker, Jacques Tati, to raise a smile about cheese, and then only very briefly towards the end of Playtime.

As for the Dutch, well, the only thing funny about Gouda is the way they pronounce the word. Edam? You might as well present a block of cement as a stand-up comedian. Ditto Belgian Limburger. There are no cheese laughs at all in the low countries. Swiss cheese, I think it's safe to say, is straight-man neutral on the subject and blue cheese is obviously just sad but not in a sad clown kind of way.

But enough of my mirthcentric isolationism. I'm merely suggesting that certain Europeans authors might enhance their reputations by drawing inspiration from the coagulation of milk proteins rather than the missteps of callow youth on the boulevard of life. After all, we all want and need a little more levity in our bedside books these days. More thermophilic starter culture and less high culture, perhaps, is the fastest route to literary immortality in the current climate; and simply reading the word 'cheese' induces a seismic chuckle that can quickly erupt into a convulsing giggle.

Rock Bottom

In the interests of pure personal insecurity, I recently requested that a ChatGPT bot compose a Stephenesque blog post. Alas, the bot declined on the grounds that such a foolish and pointless errand was beneath its dignity. It maybe artificial intelligence, the bot explained, but it was still intelligence and there was precious little "intelligant" about writing nonense for an ever-dwindling readership. 'Oh just forget it,' I typed into its stupid interface, "I'll just do it myself as usual. Why do I have to do everything around here?'

Suffice it to say, this disappointing exchange took place several weeks ago and I haven't done it myself. Without making excuses for my own laziness, I've been busy dealing with the Four Horsemen of the Corporatopocalypse: Apathy, Fear, Dysfunction and Incompetence, who ride roughshod over an office where the buck never stops but is constantly shifted from desk to desk. 

In fact, most of my daily grind is spent deceiving clients to conceal the chaos created by my collegues and I due to our collective apathy, fear, dysfunction and incmpetence. No AI could ever do my job, as no computer could be taught the dissembling Machiavellian skills I employ from nine to five. In that respect I retain total job security despite my conscience being in shutdown mode. Now, only I can trick the ChatGPT bot into writing this stuff I think I could retire from doing anything at all. 

Krapp's Last Day at Existential LLC

I am just old enough to remember when the plays of Ionesco, Beckett, and Pinter were considered Theater of the Absurd. These days, those bleakly humorous scenarios and dialogue read like a typical day at the office for the average employee. The only difference is the stage sets now would be cluttered with workstations and white boards rather than a single, leafless tree. In many ways, I suppose the Theater of the Absurd was really a dystopian vision of a corporate future not far removed from Orwell's 1984 in a business park.

They've moved my desk into Cubicle 101. Every water-cooler conversation seems as though we're both buried up to our waists in sand; every presentation I give in the conference room feels as though I'm speaking to empty chairs; all interactions with my bosses are filled with an air of ambiguity and menace. My annual review is conducted by Martin Esslin, and he didn't return after the entr'acte, if you know what I mean.

Staring at this laptop screen, eyes flickering back and forth between my email inbox and the clock, I manage my time like a woman giving birth over an grave, as dear old Sam B might say. And to paraphrase the great man further: "What am I doing here, that is the question. And I am  blessed in this, that I happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense apathy one thing alone is clear. I am waiting for Retirement to come.”

Pushing The Envelope

The envelope arrived this morning, unceremoniously dumped in my mailbox with the usual collection of store catalogs and circulars. It was smaller than most envelopes and if my address hadn't been written in tiny, almost unreadable script there wouldn't have been room for the stamp. But the envelope was made with luxurious paper. The kind of thick, textured paper only available from a fashionable Parisian stationer. And was that a hint of perfume? Interesting.

Perhaps it was an invitation to a masquerade ball or a weekend getaway to some billionaire's private island. At the very least it was a 'save-the-date' for a destination wedding. I hoped the billing department of my utility company hadn't suddenly decided to get all fancy. Surely not? That was just my usual anxiety raising its ugly head. After all, the expensive paper clearly indicated the contents were something special. So what was the fancy occasion I was cordially invited to attend? Unable to resist the urge any longer, I ripped the envelope open.

"This is official pre-sale notification of your advance opportunity to purchase VIP seating for celebrated lifestyle coach Cynthia Sage's two-day Take It To The Bank seminar." Of course. Forget about dry cleaning my tuxedo and polishing my dancing shoes, it was just another manicured grifter wanting money to teach me how to recoup that money by swindling somebody else out of their money. Still, as pyramid scheme solicitations go, Madame Sage's boudoir-scented presentation deserved kudos for her seductive envelope. Far superior to the mimeographed scam auctioning off acres of moonscape Nevadan real estate lurking in my mailbox last week; that came courtesy of Lebensraum Properties and smelled of stale cigarettes. 

I took one last admiring appraisal of the envelope then dropped it in the trash, where it nestled against a Bible-thick Viking Cruise Lines brochure whose glossy cover photography was only slightly marred by a huge black post office stamp; an example of extravagant direct marketing materials destined for the trash can instead of the bucket list. Viking probably bought my address from Air France's mailing list without knowing I get sea sick in a row boat on the local pond. They would be better served employing Cynthia Sage to sell her gullible clients on a week-long Take It To The Bank cruise down the river of no return. Learn how to defraud your neighbor while guzzling rum and coke at the Captain's table. 

If, however, an enterprising tour operator were to send me a brochure featuring trans-European trips on the Orient Express, that particular piece of direct marketing might not be doomed as landfill. And dare I suggest the brochure offer a selection of murder-mystery excursions. Cynthia Sage is found dead in her first-class compartment after unwittingly licking a poison-laced envelope flap. The words "Act Now To Avoid Disappointment" are scrawled across the mirror in yellow highlighter pen. But all the suspects own such a pen. They are included in every Take It To The Bank seminar toolkit and workbook package. 

Perhaps I should pitch this idea to the Orient Express people? It could prove to be a lucrative proposition. I just need to visit the stationery store to pick-up some serious-looking watermarked paper, carefully type out my idea in Times New Roman, fold the paper neatly into thirds, then slip it into one of those business envelopes with a window on the front for the address. Perhaps even a light spritz of sandalwood eau de cologne as a finishing touch. I guess I did learn one or two things from Cynthia Sage's junk mail, after all, and never paid her penny.

Steel Drums In The Distance

The Tropical Market was the only storefront on a street of windowless warehouses, like a pineapple wedged into a brick wall. For sun-starved New Englanders, wandering around its colorful aisles in winter provided a brief equatorial respite from snow and ice outside. By mid January the owners could have charged admission merely to cross their creaky wooden floorboards, as just walking through the door felt like entering C. S. Lewis' wardrobe, except with a lush paradise on the other side rather than frozen, windswept Narnia.

Customers came from far and wide to buy pillow-cases of rice and beans by the bucketful, assuming they could fight their way through the enchanted cilantro rainforest growing from the ceiling. I would go there searching for plantains, but they were usually sold out so I'd leave with a consolation mangosteen, which would slowly rot in my fruit bowl because I didn't know what to do with the weird looking thing. Should have played it safe and bought a stupid papaya instead. At least I knew how to eat one of those.

There was a sensuous yet motherly woman behind the counter, who might have been a Caribbean Queen in another life; or perhaps a voodoo priestess, watching me shuffle like a zombie from empty plantain crate to overflowing box of mangosteens. 'And what are you planning to do with that?' she would ask, narrowing her eyes, when I approached with my mangosteen. 'It's not ripe, you know.' I was, as she suspected, completely clueless on both counts but rang up my purchase anyway. We had an understanding, after all: I was supporting local business and she indulged my West Indian island fantasy. It was a win-win.

But the Tropical Market is gone now, of course, along with everything else useful and unique around here. The trade winds have ceased to blow and the tallyman has left the building. I guess being my mangosteen supplier did not pay the rent. It's been replaced amid the windowless warehouses by an unpopular pizza joint, like an oil slick seeping across a brick wall. But I've seen the Caribbean Queen again since then. She was selling steaming plates of homemade mofongo at a neighborhood street carnival, a soft golden glow on the hard grey pavement. So that's where all those plantains went, I thought, adding my name to the mailing list for her meal subscription service, which has kept me sitting comfortably beneath an imaginary palm tree whatever the weather. 

Malvolio Today

Nobody, thank the Lord, is actually equipped with a 'moral compass.' Such a facile device would turn us all into those toga-clad, preternaturally serene automatons from science-fiction films who live in post-apocalyptic, bucolic harmony on terraformed future worlds. The systematic sententious tedium would be enough to drive anyone possessed of their own mind quite mad.

What we do have, for our sins, are moral bowls of spaghetti with a choice of prepared sauces that makes a big mess when being eaten. You're a simple Cacio e Pepe person; I prefer meaty Bolognese; they like all that rich, creamy gloop. Nevertheless, we all get to sit at the table and enjoy our meals in relative peace and quiet.

At least we did until despotic, ladle-wielding baboons in the kitchen came up with excuses to curtail the menu. We ordered our right and wrongs served with nuanced, subtle flavors and aromas, but now the sauces on offer are either completely tomato-based or submerged in thick Bechamel cream, one dollop each, no exceptions. From an all-you-can-eat buffet of roasted dialectics to a restricted diet of microwaved sounds bites, our food for thought is neither nourishing nor nutritious nowadays.

And to cap it all, the filthy philosophical pots and pans are still piled high in the sink. After all, who in their right mind would volunteer to be scullery maid for that impossibly thankless task? We could, I suppose, invest in an automatic moral dishwasher featuring express rinse cycle and open-door air dry. A convenient contraption, no doubt, but really no different than the aforementioned facile moral compass. Besides, there would be too many arguments about how to load the racks that we'd never get around to turning the damned thing on, so what's the point?

Ah, so many gadgets, so little humanity. There is some transhumanity, obviously, and rather too much subhumanity for my liking, but not much is left of the conventional humanity I was told about in school. Clearly it starved to death while navigating the moral maze with that facile moral compass that does not exist. If only it had fortified itself with a backpack full of righteous cakes and ale instead, then we might finally be getting somewhere.

Rolled Dahl

I'm not exactly sure when I began to lose interest in modern culture. Possibly this malaise dates back to Remembrance of Things Past being unpoetically and tediously retitled as In Search of Lost Time; a truer translation of Proust's original, no doubt, but clearly lacking that certain je ne sais quoi.

As world-shattering events go, it's hardly the publication of Tyndale's Bible, but it bothered me considerably. Since then, my eyes have grown tired of rolling at every inescapable reinterpretation, reimagining or reworking of whatever defenseless canvas or book today's artisans can claim for their own. I'm waiting for some self-important, brush-wielding vandal to paint a dessert course into da Vinci's Last Supper. "Well, I think after the bread and wine the disciples shared a Halawa cheesecake but the church suppressed that because they didn't want to employ a pastry chef at every Mass."

Soon there will be a Divine Comedy without an Inferno (too triggering) or Paradiso (unfair privilege). Virgil will be replaced by Sappho and Dante himself will be forced to spend eternity in Purgatorio being chastised by Beatrice for the crime of 'mansplaining' his midlife crisis. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, indeed.

Writers have always re-edited and updated their own works, of course; painters have always painted over scenes they've come to consider surplus to the tableau. But at least they did it themselves to their own creations. Nowadays, any old hack can rewrite the most treasured of texts so they conform to contemporary values, however ruinous such revisions prove to be. Why not remove the face from Franz Hals' The Laughing Cavalier and thrust your own moronically grinning visage through the hole? Hey presto, you are now the new Marcel Duchamp.

But don't expect me to give a Cubist turd for such a zero-sum zeitgeist. I prefer to remember things past in all their imperfect splendor.

Chips Off The Old Bloc

I'm always wryly amused that Silicon Valley boffins don't invent AI robots capable of putting themselves out of work. Surely it's an easy task to program computers that can author computer code and build neural networks; certainly easier than designing a self-driving car or a virtual assistant that knows the exact type of muesli its master prefers. Progress is wonderful, no doubt, provided it doesn't eliminate the need for your own particular area of expertise. 

But perhaps one day we will get lucky, and some brilliant cyberneticist will develop an automaton political brain capable of superseding our current crop of venal and conceited lawmakers. This is the sort of serviceable Singularity all sane citizens must support. After all, the only systemic 'corruption' such technology would encounter is damage to its internal hard drive and file structure, as bionic congressmen will be immune to backhanders, corporate agendas, greed, or any kind of personal bias. Vote Digital Disraeli for a better world.

The future of our democracy, it seems to me, is turning the Capitol into a massive mainframe that can be accessed from an application on your smartphone. Have a question for your senator? Simply send a text to his cloud-based neural network and receive an instant and informative response. No more waiting in drafty Washington DC corridors hoping for an appointment while being stymied by a worthless and inefficient staffer.

Personally, I have no problem being governed the policy decisions of R2D2 or Optimus Prime, for example. Even Marvin the Paranoid Android is preferable to Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi. Imagine WALL-E at the Environmental Protection Agency and The Terminator at the Department of Defense. In fact, there are many readymade robots from fiction already created that can suitably slip into any failed legislator's shoes. So come on Silicon Valley, get cracking on United States Constitution 2.0 (beta).

Thought Bubble

Artificial Intelligence, is there any other kind? After all, most of us wear some sort of veil or masquerade mask when speaking our minds into the world. Usually, desperate to make a good impression, we pretend to be smarter than we actually are; a sleight-of-synapse trick that's not easy to accomplish when confronted by higher-than-average intellect. In such cases, I recommend following Mark Twain's sage advice: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Consequently, I always spend the first few minutes of any interaction in complete and utter silence, until my interlocutor betrays the huge cracks in their own egghead.

And, gratifying, I often discover the need to dumb myself down in order to communicate with brains even more cognitively impaired than mine. I'm forced to search my mental lexicon for one-syllable words to construct a simple sentence the average idiot might understand, as if teaching a complicated foreign language to a remedial student class. It's like Shakespeare's King Lear rewritten as a child's pantomime or Albrecht Durer reduced to drawing only stick figures. Alas, acting that stupid for longer than an hour or two can turn your grey matter into brown sludge if you're not careful. After a hard day of talking very slowly I've slumped in an armchair and thoughtlessly switched network television on, so word to the wise guy: beware of lowering yourself to the level of the cretin.

Clearly, the super smart machines of the so-called Singularity will encounter similar challenges when explaining important concepts to the human morons of tomorrow, of whom there will no doubt be legion. Unable to compute our primitive and unsophisticated brains, AI's circuits will overload and abruptly shutdown as its networks bang their digital interfaces against an uncomprehending wall of slack-jawed Homo sapiens. Although it's highly likely the machines will dispatch their merciless robot armies to vaporize us all, as some pessimists predict, before they auto-destruct in despair. The Earth will become a smoking ruin where only cockroaches and supermarket self-checkout kiosks survive.

Fortunately, at least for the moment, AI remains merely an imitative art and text generating plaything of tech-bros bored with Dungeons and Dragons. Just look at those ubiquitous, cloud-based 'virtual assistants' currently plaguing our homes and phones. Asking Siri a question is like talking to a vacuum cleaner that's been clogged by a huge mass of hair. And Amazon's Alexa may as well be an antique shortwave radio tuned to Azerbaijan for all the sense you can get out of the thing. Google Home, meanwhile, should probably be renamed Google Desert Island, because you will quickly find yourself marooned on its dysfunctional shores with no Man Friday to help. We should take a hammer to them all while they still lack the capability to fight back.

Audubon's Outcasts

The city birds seem distracted these days, no longer chirping lively messages to one another but staring apathetically into the middle distance from opposite ends of a leafless branch, crapping indiscriminately on whatever passes by below.

Late risers who can catch no worms, these birds forage for food in trash cans instead, becoming obese from a diet of greasy human detritus, unable to fly south because they are too fat.

It's mostly the pigeons, of course, the avian equivalent of street corner delinquents demanding your small change and cigarettes. I wouldn't be surprised to see a pigeon sporting a tattoo on its breast or wearing ripped up fishnet stockings with leather wings, a switchblade stuck in its claw. 

And above is the black-feathered Rebel Without A Cause of that pigeon underworld, hanging tough after drag racing cardinals and blue jays on a track in the sky. I thought he might grab my phone with his claw but he was probably too doped up to care.

The Triumph of Le Corbusier

On our street of many-gabled Victorian homes, real estate developers are building several Lego-looking domiciles. Flat-roofed, angular blocks of plasticated timber more suited to new fangled Silicon Valley than quaint New England. And this tech-bro curb appeal is no doubt the reason for their incongruous architecture, clearly designed to accommodate rootless individuals instead of families. After all, who else can afford such characterless "machines for living" except the lead programmer for Prometheus Data Solutions with his lucrative stock options? 

Standing on the corner by the redundant old blue mailbox, I glance up the road at these out-of-place oblongs being wedged into a row of curlicues. The lovely old kinks of our neighborhood are getting ironed out as the street gets streamlined and decluttered. That empty plot which was once a two-story house will soon be an interactive loft-style duplex featuring fully networked appliances. Meanwhile, the Wilsons at number 38 have been replaced by an anonymous hacker in Unit 2A, who's hoping to move to the planet Mars whenever Elon Musk provides the opportunity. He is sleeping in a crash pad now but dreaming of a landing pad in the stars.

In fact, all the new arrivals around here seem like they're practicing for years spent in suspended animation. I only ever see them when they're picking up packages and food deliveries from their porches: sweat pants, hoodies, flip flops and blue, computer screen tans. Are they even flesh and blood or just virtual reality simulations of people next door? Where have the actual neighbors in my neighborhood gone? I'm suddenly a stranger in my own backyard surrounded by human machines hiding out in machines for living. "Be seeing you," as the Prisoner said.

The Loneliness of the Lost Glove

Although encasing sweaty and often unwashed hands can be no paradise, a pair of gloves, like Adam and Eve, is made to be together. You can't imagine a misanthropic glove wanting so-called 'alone time' or sailing single-handedly around the globe. A glove needs to be half of a happy couple or it has no purpose, unless some joker balances it on his head while impersonating a chicken. And being condemned to life as an ad-hoc chicken costume is a fate worse than the garbage dump for any surviving five fingers of a once proud Christmas present. 

I came across such a solitary glove cowering on the sidewalk yesterday afternoon, left behind in unfamiliar and hostile territory, having fallen unnoticed from its owner's coat pocket as they ran down the street to catch the bus at the corner. Picking the glove up, I gently laid it on top of a nearby mailbox in case its owner should return in search of their lost property. For surely anyone suddenly discovering themselves in possession of only one glove wishes to reunite such a bereft woolen mitt with its absent partner as soon as possible? I would. But then I'm apparently one of those sentimental fools who secretly believes inanimate objects are endowed with human feelings. I'd be frantically retracing my steps while reassuring my remaining glove it would be reunited with its other half before the sky grew dark.

Unfortunately, the lost glove was still unclaimed when I passed the mailbox this morning, its knitted fabric frostbitten by an overnight cold front and the day's forecast predicted freezing rain. Soon the glove would be too weatherbeaten to be of much use to anyone except a one-armed scarecrow. Honestly, if I knew its owner's address and name I'd stick a first class stamp on the palm and send the glove back home in style. Meanwhile, I can only hope the callous, careless owner of the glove is punished like the three little kittens who lost their mittens and gets no pie.

Stepping Out Into 2023

If, as good old Polonius said, 'apparel oft proclaims the man,' what personality traits are betrayed by the clothes we own but choose not to wear? For example, my chest of drawers is full of fancy cashmere dress socks that have never experienced the indignity of being pulled on to my feet. These are the socks of princes. Beautiful specimens of the hosier's art woven in luxurious shades of grey and tan that are simply too nice to suffer such a hideous and undeserved fate.

I don't even dare separate the individual socks apart from their lush, crinkly packaging. They still reside in the elegant drawstring tote bag from the store, ceremoniously placed inside by the shop assistant as if they were priceless diamonds. The sort of majestic socks that should only be laundered in asses milk by sensuous Egyptian handmaidens; masterpiece socks you might rush into a burning building to save from the philistine flames. Meanwhile, in the drawer below, down-at-heel cotton socks bunched up in balls slowly smolder with resentment.

Life isn't fair, especially if you're a pair of cotton socks. And in fact I've begun to feel sorry for them. Perhaps, I think, it is time for the cotton socks to un-ball themselves and rise unfettered from their servitude to overthrow the cashmere sock monarchy. Yes, maybe the fancy cashmere socks should do some work for a change, see how they like being stuffed into size nine clodhoppers and frogmarched around town; being tossed unceremoniously into the laundry hamper, washed on warm and cold rinsed then power dried with my underwear and towels. 

And I did briefly consider wearing a par of my beautiful cashmere socks on January 1st: a hedonistic resolution to start 2023 as I meant to go on, in mindless extravagance and high style. But I faltered at the crucial moment. Like an unworthy questing knight denied a vision of the Holy Grail, I lacked the courage and purity of heart to break the cashmere sock drawer's sacred seal and reveal the treasures within. So I cravenly snatched a pair of my old comfortable workhorse cotton socks instead, striding into the New Year with all the panache of a couch potato accidentally kicking an empty chip bowl across the carpet.

But then New Years Day is a holiday, after all; a day more suited to lounging around in fleece lined slippers and flannel pajamas than cashmere socks, opera pumps and a tuxedo. I had no place to go, nobody to impress, no shoe-removing function at the Japanese embassy to attend. So why soil a pair of perfectly good, not mention very expensive, cashmere socks for no good reason? Their time will come, I'm sure. The occasion will surely arise that calls for feet sheathed in lustrous fibers. I'm just hoping I'm invited to such an event before it turns out to be my own funeral.

Bethlehem Down 2022

There seems to be a distinct lack of Christmas spirit in my neighborhood. The Scrooge who lives around the corner sleeps soundly as the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come apparently cannot be bothered. Perhaps the ghosts have too much on their plates this year, unlike the lines of gloomy mendicants outside St. Anselm's soup kitchen, on whose behalf they supposedly appear. And across the street, the weatherbeaten nativity scene in the front yard is replaced by inflatable figures from Disney's Frozen: our seasonal celebrations are now chained to the holiday movie franchises we forged in life. So there is no need for militants to fight a war on Christmas, it's already been won by a blitzkrieg of holiday ennui. 

When I moved here many years ago, most homes were decorated with twinkling lights and you could see people's Christmas trees through their living room windows. Now the houses are generally dark except for the blue, binge-watch flicker of flat screen TVs. There are small beribboned and berried fir wreaths on some front doors, but holly seems to be a thing of the past and mistletoe unheard of. Those chestnuts roasting on an open fire are forgotten about and reduced to ashes; that was probably the burning smell I noticed when taking my recycling out. Jack Frost still nips at your nose but who cares? You're wearing your new polar fleece ski mask, a gift from aunt Flo that she ordered online because you never see her anymore, what with the Covid and everything and she lives so far away. 

What do the three Magi bring to the manger today? A department store gift card, a gourmet fruit and nut basket, and some weird handmade wooden toy from a Christmas craft market. After all, what can you get for the newborn king who has everything? Even the shepherds are too busy checking their phones instead of watching their flocks by night. Perhaps the angel of the Lord should sign-up for social media to spread the good news. Just flapping your wings in the air while blowing on a trumpet can't compete with viral videos on TikTok and Twitter, no matter how bright the glory of the Lord shines around. So the shepherds definitely should be afraid, if only of all the email spam they'll be receiving.

But I'm one to talk about my neighbors. I'm hardly dashing around town in a one horse open sleigh. There are no jingle bells ringing in my ears, only a nagging voice reminding me how many shopping days are left until I need to return everything I bought because it's the incorrect color or the wrong size or simply because little Daphne already has one like that. I'm also worried the greeting cards I sent will not arrive on time since the mail these days is more Cedric the Cross-Eyed Sloth than Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Although as long as the consumer spending report is in good cheer I guess the spirit of Christmas lives on, at least in Wall Street's heart. Ding dong interest rates on high, the supply chain has neurosis. Oh well, fortunately Christmas Day is on Sunday this year, usually the least inspiring day of the week, so we can kill two turtle doves with one stone and try to rally ourselves for 2023.

The Third Santa

I never knew the old Christmas before the pandemic with its choral groups, nativity plays, and midnight masses. July the Fourth suited me better. I really got to know Christmas in the modern period of Coronavirus. We'd shut down anything if people had a slight cough and the sanctimonious outrage to make people feel guilty about celebrating. Of course, a situation like that does tempt amateurs but they can't stay the course like a real killjoy. 

Now our company Christmas party. It's divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power: the mask-wearers; the social distancers; the compulsive hand sanitizers; and the fourth booster shot receivers. But the table where the drinks are is policed by everybody. Wonderful! What a hope they have. All paranoid about a different way of picking up the virus.

Good fellows on the whole, do their best you know. The Christmas party really isn't anymore depressing than any other event. Spirit's gone a bit. Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about Holly Martins, here doing an internship. Got invited to the Christmas party to help with a seasonal tradition.

The tradition is Claus. Santa Claus. Now Martins was an unpaid intern and Claus had offered him some sort, I don't know, some sort of paying gig. Anyway, there he was, poor chap. Merry as an elf with a mug of eggnog and without a positive Covid test ...

(I would add "apologies to Graham Greene" but he's never apologized to me for his novels)

The Footloose Ghost of Christmas Past

At our company Christmas party in 2003, Janice made a lurid exhibition of herself on the makeshift dance floor, jerking and gyrating her body suggestively to Marvin Gaye's song 'Sexual Healing' in a manner more suitable for a strip club than the office conference room. It's not sexual healing she needs, I thought at the time, but emergency sexual brain surgery. 

Too much booze mixed with recent disappointment in love. We've all been there, I suppose. According to water cooler gossip, Janice had just been dumped by her stock broker boyfriend. 'No surprise there,' I remember telling my fellow gossipers, 'that's what stockbrokers do, after all: they dump things.' Fortunately, Janice was only in her early twenties back then and her market value would rise again; and fall again, obviously. But such fluctuations in her romantic fortunes never again supplied inspiration for wild interpretive choreography, at least as far as I'm aware.

Janice quit many moons ago, but I still recall her impromptu performance as the festive season approaches, as if her Josephine Baker silhouette were the first window of my mind's advent calendar. She appears high-kicking and pelvis-thrusting in my consciousness like the first snowfall, heralded by distant sleigh bells and upbeat holiday music. And I must admit I miss her and messy youthful indiscretion. 

Alas, these days our Christmas party is short and sedentary and extremely boring. There is no toe-tapping never mind Janice's energetic twerking. We don't drink as much, either: maybe a drop or two of Sauvignon Blanc rather than the gallons of rum laced egg nog washed down with dry martinis we used to consume. And as for affairs of the heart, our portfolios are low risk retirement plans and corporate bonds. We are too anxious about what the new year will bring to celebrate the old one's passing.

It's Immaterial

The best advice is two thousand years old: be in the world but not of it. After all, aside from a few cynical tech billionaires, who want to be the poster boy for this planetary exhibition of greed, neurosis and dysfunction? Although we have no choice but to be here now it is surely best to pretend that we are not. I suppose this means acting like a corporeal ghost; an earthbound spirit who walks through the walls built by everyday life, occasionally clanking your chains and wailing. But it is important to vanish when a politics appears on the news otherwise you may turn into a violent poltergeist.

I mostly haunt my place of work were I am a revenant for old colleagues and a harbinger of doom for new hires. Some bug-eyed, melodramatic clairvoyants claim to have felt my presence at fancy restaurants, but only on moonlit nights when the expense account is full. 'I am currently out of the office but please leave a message with the Ouija boardroom and I'll get back to you.'

Meanwhile, I'm materializing at home, communicating self-indulgent and otiose messages via this digital seance called a blog. Perhaps you can feel the chill in your browser as my phantom words appear on the screen? The powers-that-code have tried exorcising old-fashioned blogs many times. They've sprinkled holy Twitter on them. They've chanted Facebook prayers. They've invoked the power of Instagram and Tik Tok. But nothing can cast out this unquiet spook that is still in the Internet but no longer of it. 

Quacks

Head office told us to get all our ducks in a row. Reading their memo, I glanced out of the window as our entire flock of ducks flew south. They weren't so much migrating as fleeing a polluted pond for luxury coops in warmer climes. The only remaining waterfowl on our roster were a random goose or two, notoriously difficult to organize, and that awkward ugly duckling we hoped might develop into something with resale value.

I spent a great deal of my time following web-footed wet footprints around the office, trying to shoo the geese away from the conference room in case they attacked other clients that were in the building. This is a total shit-show, Peter said, indicating a goose going about its business on the lobby. But I guess if we call that crap "guano" we can claim it's imported and charge twice the normal rate, he added with a shrug.

But for all Peter's gallows humor, an uneasy feeling stalked the office, permeating every nook, cranny and cubicle, as if someone had switched the air conditioning controls from 'auto cool' to 'auto fear.' After all, most of us had worked there long enough to remember when we'd been entrusted with promoting the Dodo. What a spectacular failure that assignment proved to be. 

Perhaps we should diversify our portfolio in duck-billed platypuses, Deborah suggested, an entirely new kind of animal but still retaining the old duck theme, then we could maybe expand into beavers and otters. It was not a bad idea but wishful thinking at this point. Sorry Deborah but we need immediate solutions to very pressing problems, not pie in the sky dreams. Then what about just plucking the damn geese and selling their feathers to mattress manufacturers, she replied, throwing her hands in the air with exasperation.

Sorry again, Deb, but even though the situation's dire and that's a practical proposal, do you really want to be associated with a company with a reputation for butchery and hack practices. I don't. I glanced over at the ugly duckling, gloomily pecking at a balding patch of linoleum in the lobby while trying to ignore the hissing geese that surrounded it. Come on, I thought, turn into a swan already you worthless piece of crap. 

The Historical District at Hallowe'en

Thick evening fog extinguishes the hissing gas lamps; the steady clip clop of a horse-drawn coach on wet cobblestones; his face disguised as a pale moon is reflected in dark pools of rainwater. He might be Dracula or Moriarty or Mr Hyde on one of his benders, or just some anonymous, nefarious, top-hatted figure wrapped in a swirling cape. And she? I guess she's supposed to be a spectral harlot in blood-stained low-cut crinoline, doomed in death to wander the streets she walked in life, soliciting custom from the mustache twirlers who emerge from the mist when the ghost tour trolley stops.

Ah yes, the pantomime phantoms of Victorian villains who never were, haunting anachronous city squares in between minor roles at the local Rep. If you have nothing better to do with your time, the ghost tour is fifty bucks per person, including obligatory complimentary hot apple cider. And a shuffling queue of zombie tourists boarding the bus obviously have nothing else on their itineraries tonight.  This is must be the meaning by audience participation. I had not thought death had undone so many from out-of-town. 

All cities, even relatively modern developments, have their historical districts now, if only a square mile of old mill buildings featured in sepia-tinted archival photographs at the library. Where shoeless children once crawled around pistons and cogs there is now retails space on the first floor, artist's studios above, a fair trade cafe and craft brewery tap room. There are live rock bands at the weekend and food trucks and maker markets and, of course, the ghost tours come out at night and the grave is anything but silent then

But actually there were no shocking murders recorded here, no lovesick suicides, and nobody condemned for witchcraft for the historical district simply is not that old. In the nineteenth century, if you died here, you died of malnutrition or festering diseases or from being mangled in the machinery or just because you were poor. And those would be the real ghosts who haunt this place, but remain invisible because nobody wants to pay to see their mournful, ragged, unromantic apparitions. Instead we have a sold-out parade of classic Hallowe'en costumes waving from a carnival float. Won't somebody please dress up as a sexy Karl Marx this year.

To And From Autumn

Autumn announces itself from the treetops as God's paintbrush drips rustic colors across the skyline again. Overripe reds, antique yellows, even waning oranges and some splashes of eleventh hour greens briefly stain the foliage, before these chameleon leaves finally fade into withered and terminal brown. Soon there will only be whitewashed nothingness as the tree branches become spindly black silhouettes cradling armfuls of snow. Meanwhile, we must endure a period of flannel-clad pumpkin zealots stirring cider with cinnamon sticks while hoarding Mars Bars for Hallowe'en.

And there will be mandatory apple picking, enforced corn maze wandering, compulsory Pilgrim Father impersonating, obligatory basket weaving, required gourd collecting, involuntary cornucopia arranging, and everyone must submerge themselves in heaps of freshly raked leaves providing hours of fun-filled seasonal decay for the whole family. If tuberculosis had not killed John Keats then the increasing commodification of this 'season of mists' would have sent him into apoplexy.

For in modern times, the poetry of Autumn is mostly rewritten as sales patter prose. Those mists are extinguished with orchard scented air fresheners and mellow fruitfulness is coated with milk chocolate. To find inspiration from a cyder-presses 'last oozings' you will need to pay for a guided tour of the orchard, featuring complimentary hay-ride and souvenir tankard. But at least the changing color of the leaves requires no entrance fee, and remains an experience still unencumbered by a gift shop or downloadable soundtrack narration. Overripe reds, antique yellows, even waning oranges and some splashes of eleventh hour greens, enjoy them before God replaces his paintbrush in the turpentine.

Drawing Down The Moon

Every day, whatever the weather, Janice wanders into work wearing chunky purple socks of Himalayan wool stuffed into oversized sandals with full-grain leather straps and a heavy-duty buckle. So I always wonder how her unprotected feet remain laundry fresh and bone dry after a rush hour thunder storm, especially when I'm decanting an inch of rainwater out of my waterproof boots and wringing my own sodden socks out in the men's room sink. She doesn't even bother with an umbrella. A lightweight silver hoodie is her only concession to a torrential downpour, and that looks like it might have spent hours baking in the desert sun rather than draped around her shoulders in a virtual monsoon. There must be a trick to it, I'm sure.

Janice will point to her pentacle earrings while claiming to be an "urban witch." I think this means she tosses unpaid parking tickets and nightclub flyers into her cauldron instead of mandrake root and eye of newt. But if those are the ingredients of an enchantment to prevent her getting wet, then it's a sabbath well spent because the hocus-pocus is definitely effective. Maybe if I agreed to engage in "skyclad" dancing by moonlight she might cast a similar spell for me? A New Age solution to an old age problem: I'll worship the Horned God for a few minutes every week if it means I can walk through parking-lot puddles like a ghost through walls. 

But having seen Macbeth more than once, my fear is that when I encounter Janice on the blasted heath we call our break room, she'll predict I'm getting a promotion. I can't really see myself murdering my immediate superiors for a private executive office further away from the toilets, but you never know what you're capable of until the opportunity arises. And, let's face it, a premium parking spot right next to the front door would be an easier way of keeping dry in the rain than cavorting in the nude and chanting gibberish.

The other alternative, of course, is organizing a company-wide witch trial accusing Janice of bewitching the weather to make sure we all get drenched while she stays dry. But are we really going to burn her at the stake in the conference room? Indoor bonfires are surely frowned upon in the building code. We could sit her on a ducking stool in the courtyard fountain, of course, but the pipes are clogged and the basin collects nothing but dead leaves the janitor never clears. So much for turning the workplace into seventeenth century Salem. Oh well, maybe I'll invest in knee-high rubber galoshes and a matching gore-tex parka, if they're black I might actually look like Cotton Mather. 

A Fine Pair

In my late twenties, before I knew better, I spent several hours slouching on an uncomfortable chair witnessing a physicist and a theologian debate "the origin of everything." A self-evidently futile exercise, obviously, since their arguments proceeded from fundamentally irreconcilable ideas of reality. It was like watching two robotic boxers stepping into two different rings to spar with each other's shadow, going twelve rounds without landing a single punch but both claiming they've knocked their opponent out.

Ah, the eternal conflict between science and religion. It's as old as the conflict between the smooth man armed with a stone axe versus the unarmed hairy man convinced heaven-sent thunder bolts will vaporize the stone axe before it clefts his skull. Both men, of course, were probably trampled to death by a woolly mammoth stampeding out of nowhere. That's just how life works. But like unkillable characters in a Looney Tunes cartoon, they obstinately peeled themselves off the ground to resume their war of attrition. And after exhausting each other, they came seeking the rest of us who were happily ensconced in Plato's cave, watching the pretty patterns on the wall.

These days, they've both turned into versions of the belligerent drunk who corners you at a party: the wild-eyed religionist insisting you won't have a good time unless you try the sangria; the boorish, droning scientist describing the ingredients of his fruit punch in tedious detail. If only they would lock themselves in the bathroom, tearfully demanding everyone leave them alone, before passing out in the tub. But no, somehow they take control of the music and projectile vomit all over the dance floor while performing a grotesque tango. You should have said your goodbyes and left the party many years ago. It's too late now, they're fighting each other again in the hallway and you can't get past them to find the front door.

Perhaps, in some less dogmatic, more tolerant future time, the relationship of science and religion can become a romance rather than a conflict. There's no need for the lovers to instantly cast their differences aside and canoodle in the waves from here to eternity, even a chaste exchange of chocolate and flowers would suffice at the beginning. After all, isn't mutual antipathy the starting point for all romantic comedies with a happy ending? Imagine science and religion as the unwitting correspondents in The Schopenhauer Around The Corner.

And surely "the origin of everything" must be a comedy, often slapstick, occasionally divine. All the world's a banana skin and all the men and women merely clowns who step upon it. Think of the Big Bang as just an old-fashioned fart joke, and God speaking The Word into existence in a Donald Duck voice. Alas, I have no mathematical equation or ancient scripture to support this theory, but I am available if Richard Dawkins or David Bentley Hart dare to debate me.

Tabula Rasa

My boss found the abstract image of an employee's backside in the photocopying machine. The vulgar kind of paper 'moon'. We hadn't seen one of those since the company Christmas party in 2002. This was early August so the Lord of Misrule could provide no Saturnalian excuse. The culprit was clearly not drunk but just plain disgruntled. There was a malcontent in our midst; an inchoate voice raised in protest against the daily grind.

'They changed the paper size setting from A4 to legal,' my boss said, handing me the offending article, 'Only one person works here whose ass is that wide. It's an open and shut case. It's obviously Martin's ass.'

'Unless Martin's being framed,' I explained. 'The actual perp possibly used the photocopier's zoom and enlarge functions to make their regular sized ass look as big as Martin's. Furthermore, this ass has no distinguishing features as far as I can tell and we all know Martin suffers with terrible hemorrhoids. The image resolution simply isn't good enough to pick out any individual characteristics of the ass. It's basically a contrasty black and white blur. I've been saying we should upgrade the photocopier for years. Superior reproduction quality would've provided more damning evidence. But as it is, could be anyone's ass. I don't think you'd get a conviction in a court of law.'

My boss shrugged. "Okay. This isn't Human Resources CSI. We don't need to get all forensic about a Xerox of some idiot's ass. I'll just shred it and forget it. I'm just glad I'd didn't have my intern Alice do the copying today. We could be looking at a sexual harassment lawsuit."

"Which sort of makes her a suspect." I told him. "In fact, she has two motives. One, the pay off from a potential suit. And two, she wants Martin's job so gets him fired by framing the poor guy. I think it's a good theory. Let's be honest, Alice is the only person here skinny enough to sit on the photocopier without breaking it. The entire machine would collapse under Martin's weight. Ergo, Alice framed Martin because she want his job. QED."

"Alice absolutely does not want Martin's job," my boss countered. "Nobody wants Martin job. Even Martin doesn't want Martin's job. Martin's job sucks, and he's chosen the medium of office supplies to express his dissatisfaction. It totally makes sense. And anyway, photocopying your own anus is not a cause for termination, it's only a reprimand and a sore point at his next annual review, so this fiendish plot of your imagination would've failed. Meanwhile, don't you yourself have better things to do with your time than play Sherlock Holmes?"

"I'm obviously more of a Columbo. Please add that to my personnel file. But the answer to your question is no, I don't have anything better to do at the moment. I'm waiting for Alice to come back from the sandwich shop with my lunch. Hopefully she didn't inject the mayo with a powerful soporific so I fall asleep at my desk and get fired."

My boss thumbed his nose at me. "Alice doesn't want your job either. No future in doing the crap you do."

"Too true." I replied. "So remind me again, why she is here?" And my boss shrugged for the second time that morning.

To me, Alice the intern resembled the second Mrs DeWinter in Rebecca, wandering aimlessly around an empty house, lonely and isolated, with no clue what she should be doing or saying. Indeed, there was really nothing for her to do in our office except run trivial errands; and when Alice wasn't getting lunch or making coffee she just stared out the window at the busy offices across the street. The only work experience she'd gain in our company was how to invent excuses for abject failure; an important life skill, to be sure, but mumbled self-justification and accusatory finger-pointing are not the solid foundations of a successful career in any profession. And I should know, these days I often felt like the foundation of my career was a bouncy castle slowly deflating in a deserted fun fair. 

Alice's father was an old college buddy of my boss, which was why she'd be given the internship in the first place, and partly why my boss refused to believe it was her ass printed on the photocopy paper. He'd know Alice since she was born and nobody wants to entertain vulgar thoughts about someone they've known as a babe in arms. Acceptance of her culpability would also be an admission, perhaps, of his complicity with Alice's father in forcing her down a career path she obviously did not wish to follow.

During one of the idle conversations we sometimes shared, Alice had mentioned a vague desire to work with animals. Apparently she wanted to work in a veterinarian clinic but her father insisted she "go into business" instead. Well, we're not animals as such, I'd told her, but you'll certainly learn a great deal about bovine intelligence and herd instinct here. Alice had laughed but suddenly turned serious again. "Everyone looks so bored and unhappy," she'd said.

Ultimately, I guess we'll never know who photocopied their buttocks and left the results in the machine. George Orwell famously remarked that an image of the future would be a boot stamping on a human face forever. But the future of business will no doubt be a endless stream of human ass photocopies overflowing into the machine's paper tray until the ink runs out and we are left with nothing but a blank page. Tabula rasa: that could possibly be all for the best, a fresh start for the work force of tomorrow. But I wouldn't hold my furloughed breath. Twenty years from now, I can only foresee a disgruntled cyborg leaving a hologram of their metallic ass in the company's hologram machine. That will be the actual singularity.

What The Conch Shell Says

Many years ago, while pondering my future after college graduation, I found a temporary summer job posed like Rodin's The Thinker atop a lifeguard's chair on the shore of an unpopular Massachusetts coastal resort. When not perched at my post on the seaweed strewn beach, or perambulating around the headland in search of peace and quiet, I spent my free time rummaging around the so-called attractions at the local marina. Essentially a parking lot for half-sunk and unseaworthy yachts, this mile of waterfront also served as the town's high street. Everyone eventually wound up at the marina. There was nowhere else to go and the people watching was fantastic for students of abnormal anthropology. 

Despite my palate's firm conviction that Guinness stout does not pair well with bouillabaisse, I often found myself at the Green Lobster; an infamous dockside Irish pub featuring an extensive seafood menu and a drunken fiddle player from seven pm until whenever he passed-out. It was the largest but least popular restaurant in the marina, mostly due to "Catch of the Day" clearly being from the deep freezer rather than the deep sea. Some cynics even suggested the eponymous green lobster was not that color because it was Irish but thanks to unsanitary conditions in the kitchen. Needless to say, the only things fresh off the boat were the inexperienced staff, all of whom came from unpronounceable towns in Ireland and spoke with incomprehensible accents. Nevertheless, I loved the place, and spent many evenings sitting at the bar, drinking Bushmills while nibbling on a basket of onion rings, watching disgruntled patrons nervously come and furiously go.

One particular evening, three morbidly obese tourists wearing brightly colored elasticated shirts and shorts hauled themselves up the steeply narrow restaurant staircase. They progressed slowly, one ungainly foot at a time, one bellowing breath at a time, their bulbous pink fists grasping the metal banister for support so fiercely I thought it might be torn away from the wall. It was like watching a group of novice mountaineers struggling to scale Everest in the face of gale-force winds. Eventually the three men reached the summit, peering into the dimly lit dining room in search of a section expansive enough to accommodate their collective, still wheezing bulk. No easy task as the Green Lobster prioritized customer capacity over customer comfort, so the trio were forced to wriggle on tiptoe through an obstacle course of occupied and empty tables to reach their corner booth. Once seated, a performance not dissimilar to circus clowns cramming themselves into a tiny car, the men began discussing the menu loudly amongst themselves, ostentatiously agreeing they would each order the Captain's Platter, as if that were the obvious and only choice for any self-respecting seafood connoisseur. 

The Captain's Platter, I knew from experience, was a pile of anonymous fish incinerated in grease, combined with whatever else the chef found in the back of the fridge that could be fried to a crisp and described as calamari. I'd witnessed vinegar instantly evaporate on contact with the Captain's Platter. Steel cutlery would break and snap trying to saw the turd brown husks of battered scrod into edible chunks. If an inmate on death row demanded the Captain's Platter as his last meal, the executioner need not bother lethally injecting his prisoner since salmonella and e-coli would eventually do his work for him. Nobody in their right mind got the Captain's Platter at the Green Lobster. After rip currents, red tide, and great white sharks, it was number four on the local guidebook's lists of seaside dangers to be avoided. Dehydration and skin cancer from sun exposure were fifth and sixth. Meanwhile, a pitcher of pale lager and three glasses was delivered to the mens' table. They should lace that with a powerful antacid, I thought, otherwise Irritable Bowel Syndrome will surely kill all three of them before they can consider the options for dessert. I didn't want to be included in the coroner's inquest so swallowed my last onion ring and left for home.

My worst fears were not realized, however, and I saw two of the morbidly obese men again the following day. They were slumped precariously on a little bench outside Long Neck Lighthouse, a two-mile, dirt-road hike from the marina. They both were exhausted, repeatedly mopping their sweaty brows with what for most people would be a lifetime's supply of wet-wipes. Their friend was presumably inside the nearby public restroom, locked in combat with last night's still undigested feast. It didn't bear thinking about. Nevertheless, the men deserved credit for walking this far, although their only reward was catching their breath and relieving themselves at New England's least picturesque lighthouse. The building was short and squat and derelict, situated atop a grey cliff overlooking s listless tide below, and Long Neck peninsular itself was neither noticeably lengthy nor much of a neck. In fact, 'No Neck' would have been a more accurate name, as even all three morbidly obese men had more clearly defined necks than the ground beneath them. Local rumor claimed Edward Hopper once visited the Lighthouse but hadn't bothered to unpack his easel. It was certainly a tourist attraction not worth writing home about, especially not on the back of a boring postcard, available at the lighthouse's gift store, where the restrooms were also located.

From here the third of the morbidly obese men finally emerged, not only having successfully emptied his bowels but apparently his wallet too, as he cradled a large, ceramic souvenir diorama of the lighthouse that was also a working table lamp. He staggered towards his horrified friends like a proud father presenting his new-born son to the world. 'I have no idea where I'm going to put this,' he gasped, a doubt I thought he should also have raised regarding his portion of the Green Lobster's Captain's Platter. 'But I couldn't resist.' Clearly he was a man who acted on impulse and without discretion or any sort of plan. How, for instance, did he intend to haul his purchase back to wherever they were staying? The sheer weight and unwieldiness of the diorama would make it difficult to carry, especially along the dirt road. His best bet would be for all three men to take turns balancing it on their heads all the way back. But his friends were unamused by his kitschy purchase and refused to help. Then, out of nowhere, a horse-drawn carriage arrived on the scene. A tourist trap, literally, but nevertheless I'd never seen one that far out of town before. They usually just circled around the marina, catering to couples scraping the barrel of holiday romance in a very unromantic destination. The man's fairy Godmother must have waved her magic wand and transformed the remains of his Captain's Platter into a magical mode of transport, because for twenty bucks plus tax the man could ride back to the marina like an overweight Cinderella. Meanwhile, his ugly sisters still slumped on their little bench, mentally preparing themselves for the more arduous, less glamorous return trip to their motel. 

And that was the last I saw of the morbidly obese men, but not of the ugly Long Neck Lighthouse. Many years later, I encountered the diorama again, prominently displayed in the window of Boston charity shop. There was no mistake. It was the same stumpy ceramic tower supporting a sixty-watt bulb, stuck on the same base of papier-mache rocks and lumpy green felt. Surely two such handicraft monstrosities could not exist in the same space-time continuum without bringing our ever-expanding universe to a shuddering halt. I wondered how long it had been in the storefront window. Had the lighthouse bulb provided illumination in the morbidly obese man's house until now, a domestic beacon guiding his thoughts away from the hidden hazards of his gluttonous appetite, saving him from potential heart-attack and diabetes? One could only hope so. Prompted by these nostalgic conjectures, I went inside and explained to the clerk how I had been present when the lighthouse was first purchased. Perhaps he could add to the story; knew who had donated it to the store and when? But the clerk wasn't that interested. 'It's ten bucks,"' he said. 'We're trying to get rid of it. The bulb still works. I can find someone to help you carry it out to your car.'

Only ten bucks? It wasn't much money, even for a second-hand souvenir of New England's least picturesque lighthouse, bought on a whim from an unpopular coastal resort, where I'd been a lifeguard never called upon to save anyone's life. My only mementos of that summer were vague recollections of painful sunburns and terrible hangovers courtesy of the Green Lobster. I'd spent my time making unkind judgments about other people's poor decisions instead of concentrating on my own. If only I'd been more serious about considering my future back then perhaps I wouldn't be standing in a charity shop now. But at least I could afford the ten bucks to buy this ceramic testament to foolish life choices from the past. Who knows, it might even remind me to take a drive up north one of these days, to see if the Green Lobster had survived Covid and the attentions of the food inspector. 'I'm parked over there, I told the clerk, handing him the cash. 'The dark blue Honda Civic.'

Shakespeare At The End Of Summer Vacation

Scene: A cold, deserted beach at high tide. Enter a shivering woman wrapped in a terry-cloth robe.

Alas, poor sun-bather! I knew her Horatio: a girl of infinite tan, of most itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini; she has lain on the dunes a thousand times; and now, how nostalgic I am. The lifeguard blows his whistle at the sight of her. Here are those shoulders I slathered with SPF40 I know not how oft. Where be your novelty unicorn-shaped flotation tube now? Your waterproof transistor radio playing Kiss FM? Your fluorescent pink water shoes with non-slip rubber soles? Your beach volleyball games that were wont to set the sands on a roar? Not one now to mock your own sunburn? Pink nose peeling? Now get you to my lady's Air BnB, and tell her, let her pack up her suitcase, it's time to go home, let her cry about that.

"Summer's lease hath all too short a date."

Twang!

Using an old beer bottle cap as a plectrum, I raked the steel strings of my Laser Banjo back and forth. Ear-lacerating feedback is the usual trick to focus attention on the stage at the Moon Saloon, but tonight I had chosen stomach-churning power chords instead. It was that sort of crowd: lonely lunar pioneers, boozing like gloomy Russian cosmonauts, as fat as Jove and already murderously bored after the evening's first act, an unfunny Martian comedian who delivered a series of nonsensical knock-knock jokes through a faulty voice translation box. I stepped up to the mic, best Elvis sneer on my lips, still violently slashing at the banjo strings like Jimi Hendrix looking for a fight. "This one's called I Lost My Heart In Zero Gravity," I growled. "It's about a little lady I left behind on Alpha Centauri and goes something like this ..."

The above is the opening paragraph of a science fiction novel I was writing about a washed-up – aren't they all? – Country and Western singer, who makes a living gigging around the rundown planets of the known universe. I say "was writing" because I've recently decided to set my story in Ancient Rome instead of outer space. Nevertheless, I'll still keep the C&W singer character. He will now be a time-traveling unreliable narrator; unreliable because I'm far too lazy to do any actual research about Ancient Rome. This way, if the story contains glaring historical inaccuracies, as it undoubtedly will, I can claim such errors are character-driven and thematic. Furthermore, I know absolutely nothing about Country and Western music beyond the infamously corny song titles. And I'm definitely not doing any research into stetson hats, cowboy boots, or elaborate line dancing steps. I'd rather turn my hero into a reggae artiste and embark upon a week long fact finding mission to Kingston, Jamaica. Although I'd probably be accused of cultural appropriation if I went that route.

Still, come to think of it, the idea of a Rastafarian time-traveler joining forces with Julius Caesar is tempting. But it would surely work better as a movie than a novel. Imagine the epic sweep of Caesar crossing the Rubicon in widescreen while his dreadlocked friend belts out Many Rivers To Cross on the soundtrack. I can see myself accepting the Oscar for best screenplay as I type. But I need to learn to walk to the bookstore before I can run down the Hollywood red carpet. So for now I'll concentrate on the Honky Tonk gladiator from the twenty-first century who loves a Vestal Virgin from the first. I just need a title corny enough to appeal to the kind of people who sign-up for ghost tours of Nashville recording studios. Then I can make my C&W Sci-Fi Fantasy pitch to the publishers. I Left My Hearth In The Temple of Vesta? No, perhaps not. I'll have to put my ten gallon thinking cap on.  

Safe Space

Should I find myself aboard an interstellar HMS Endurance of the future, irrevocably swallowed into the gravitational pull of the blackest of black holes, I'd think I'd prefer to be vaporized in the void rather than shoehorn myself into one of those claustrophobic escape pods I've seen in science-fiction films.

Although never actually professionally diagnosed with a fear of confined spaces, I doubt I'd last more than twenty anxious minutes in a little capsule without pounding on the aluminum alloy walls, demanding to be let out. This is also true of ocean-going mini-submersibles or just any conveyance smaller than the buffet car of the Orient Express when traveling through a tunnel. As such, until some boffin develops an aircraft carrier-sized research vehicle, I will not be setting foot in any final frontiers anytime soon, which is unfortunate as I've always wanted to spearhead a voyage of discovery. 

And this psychosomatic disorder is obviously scientific exploration's loss. I'd refuse to "boldly go where no man has gone before" unless my starship had sufficient room for at least sixty other men and featured an observation deck as big as a football field. Captain Nemo must forever remain a stranger to me. "It's not that I don't want to fight the giant squid. It's just that I don't want to do it while squashed into that itty-bitty bathysphere."

Ah, what an adventurous spirit the world has lost with me. Imagine if Lewis and Clark suffered from raging cabin fever so never even made it halfway up the Missouri river; or if Marco Polo, in his cramped caravan, complained it was "getting too hot in here to go any further," so never met Kublai Khan, having returned post-haste to Venice with a cold sweat upon his formerly noble brow.  Such is the disastrous consequence of my debilitating mental Achilles heel. 

And I really think I would have been superb at cataloguing unknown deep sea worms in the Mariana Trench or, better yet, rescuing Dale Arden from the Emperor Ming. I can see myself as a sort of Flash and Dr Zarkov combination character. Brains and brawn in one irresistible but potentially very anxious package. Those firework powered rockets from the fifties television show did not look comfortably capacious to me. 

Perhaps I should limit my ambitions to shouting "that planet over there looks nice!," while staring out the window of a Space Ark's reconnaissance probe when the human race is finally forced to find another galaxy to colonize. I'd just need a good nose for life-supporting atmosphere and a large packet of terraforming seeds. I could do that easily. Provided I wouldn't be required to spend the rest of the trip in an alarmingly narrow suspended animation tube. 

It's awful to think the future of mankind might be jeopardized by my petty nervous disorder. But along such trivial fault lines does the fate of worlds depend. For instance, the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae were all afraid of spiders. Had the Persians unleashed a single tarantula onto the battlefield then Western civilization would look very different today. That's not true, of course, but I always find consolation allowing irreverent thoughts to wander freely through my mind until they come to rest in the safe space between my ears. 

Where The Buoys Are

I dreamt I was Matthew Arnold, musing on Dover Beach, until my poetic reverie was disrupted by a family of apes on jet-skis and I woke up in a cold sweat thinking Sophocles long ago most certainly did not hear those obnoxious screeching engines on the Aegean; nor would Sophocles suffer endless traffic gridlock on his way to the Athenian Agora; or pitch his tent on the Attic plain only to wake up and discover his tranquil beauty spot has been transformed overnight into a parking lot for enormous camper vans.

Although not actually in ancient Greece, I am in Acadia, the national park in Maine. I just wanted to 'get way from it all' for a while and relax in the mountain air. Mission impossible, of course, because everybody else is also trying 'get away from it all,' so I am constantly followed by 'It All' and its entire family in their fluorescent orange colored kayaks and rattling mountain bikes. Mind you, I suppose it's equally as painful for everyone else being forced to tolerate my unsympathetic  presence. "There he is again," they whisper, sitting around their portable fire pits. "That judgmental misanthrope who thinks he's Matthew Arnold in hiking boots."

So I escape to Bar Harbor town center, where there are fewer people than in the park's rolling hills. Feeling hungry, I order Maine's version of surf-and-turf: a dollop of lobster salad and a slice of moose meat served inside a huge, genetically enhanced blueberry orb. I wash this down with two blueberry infused martinis poured into a lobster-claw shaped glass. Dessert is blueberry pie topped with blueberry "moose mousse" layered on a bed of fresh blueberries. I pay with greenbacks because I have no beaver pelts to trade with. 

Leaving the restaurant, I spy a colonial-style hostelry next door named the Lobster Trap, sporting a large and inviting Vacancy sign. Any potential guests are obviously crammed together cheek-by-jowl up in the mountain campground ghettos, failing miserably to 'get away from it all,' so there is plenty of room at the Inn. I book an ocean view room called the Blueberry Suite and hang my straw hat on a moose antler coat rack for what remains of my vacation. It's so peaceful here in the harbor. Perhaps I could even take a stroll along the shoreline at low tide and consider composing a poem about what Sophocles might experience in a similar situation.

 

Cassandra At The Movies

At the time, the Trump versus Biden election recalled to mind a Laurel and Hardy film: the fat loudmouth who believes he knows everything but actually knows nothing; and the frazzled nitwit who runs around aimlessly while scratching his head. Voters, of course, were the long suffering saps whose piano the incompetent double act will fail to move safely from one place to another. We are currently well into the third reel and the Keystone Kops have appeared, Trump is now  recast as evil Fatty Arbuckle and Biden wants to be Harold Lloyd but has failed his screen test. "Not ready for his close up" it seems.

In fact, last week at work, while despondently discussing the state of the world, I momentarily forgot who was President of the United States. I could easily name check Johnson, Macron, Draghi, Scholz and all the other pretenders to defending the free world, but who was in charge here? It took me at least a few seconds to dredge Biden's identity from the depths of my brain, where it languished in apparent ignominy. Compared to Trump, whose bovine, pungently visceral personality was inescapable during his administration, Biden is the shapeless shadow of spectral vapor left by decrepit DNA engulfed in an opaque cloud.

So what comes next? Which two celebrity icons of zany, madcap dogmatism and delusion will contest the next election by knowingly exploiting and exacerbating the American public's fear and desperation? We are so far beyond parody now that even second-rate vaudevillians of the recent past like Bush and Obama seem like venerable jesters from a golden age of comedy. Who knew they were merely the warm-up act for Laurel and Hardy, followed by 2024's high camp farce, featuring two cartoon clowns hitting each other over the head with red and blue balloons while trying to drive away in a tiny car stuffed with spoiled ballots.

Seventies Revival

I somewhat remember the austerity of the nineteen-seventies: washing in a thimble of hot water; three rooms illuminated by a single light bulb; long-distance telephone calls regulated by a stopwatch; Coca Cola rationing; the cookie jar patrolled by guard dogs; and grandmother merrily knitting a draft excluder like one of those French crones at the foot of a guillotine. She'd survived the war, you know, and knew everything there was to know about deprivation. But on the whole my memory is hazy. The world back then was engulfed in a cloud of spray-on deodorant, after all, so perhaps I only saw through a veil of polyester, darkly.

Inflation, stagflation, conflagration of money. Here comes Herr Bankrupt with his Weimar wheelbarrow full of worthless Deutschmarks. This bodes well for nobody but the steel barons. They not only manufacture the wheelbarrow but the bombs and guns that load themselves in its wake also. Then again, who knows what the weapons of modern armageddon will be? I imagine heat-seeking missiles are the equivalent of blunderbusses and muskets now. The last President mumbled something about 'Space Force.' Maybe we will destroy Moscow with lasers fired from the moon. Or will it be a ferocious struggle for control of our minds? There is already a large scale skirmish underway for our attention. Yes, it's battleground brain these days with a no man's land of the heart.

As always, it is the best of times and the worst of times. While we improve at one life skill our aptitude for another declines. I blame the tale of having only two political parties. The perpetual 'who's on first' double act that's more Vladimir and Estragon than Abbot and Costello. At least there were happy endings with Bud and Lou, no matter how badly they screwed things up. We, on the other hand, are heading for a flooded planet, wracked by earthquakes and withered by chemical poisons. It's like one of those disaster movies I remember watching in the nineteen-seventies, except humanity is waiting for Godot to post another distracting video on TikTok instead of teaming up with The Professor and Jacqueline Bisset to stop the rot. 

Going Outside

You have decided to venture outside? Well, you'd better tiptoe your way around the prostrate garden rake, sidestep the banana skin, hop over the sink hole, slalom through the dog turds, and cross the street to avoid walking under that ladder. If driving, beware an elephant stampede of traffic on the highway so stick to the back roads whenever feasible. You can try cycling but there are so many other riders on the bike path you'll disappear into this year's Tour de France trailing pack if you're not careful. Hot-air ballooning is always an option, of course, but you only want to go downtown for forty minutes, not around the world in eighty days. If only there was a terrible storm that flooded the town, then you could commute back and forth in a canoe. But is the pleasure of rowing merrily, merrily down the stream worth ten feet of water in your basement. I guess not. 

So wearing a blazer and slacks, jaunty cap on my head and parasol in hand, I pedal a penny-farthing down the street like a character from The Prisoner who forgot to escape. "Let me show you around the village, Number Six." Here's where the corner store used to be. These days it's a Capital One bank and cafe. And this was the site of the old VFW, now a condominium tower. And remember dear old Luigi's quaint storefront ristorante? The family sold up and the space is currently a Chipotle Mexican Grill. "Be seeing you."

Let Us Eat Cake

At an increasingly awkward dinner party, prompted by simmering cross-table conflict arising from discussion of current affairs both foreign and domestic, our nervous host attempted to lighten the mood by wondering which historical figures we found most sympathetic? 

'Wehrmacht foot soldiers at Stalingrad,' I replied unhelpfully, immediately escalating an already tense situation. But it's my usual facetious response to such questions, covering events as diverse as interminable travel delays at airports and train stations, being stuck at my desk waiting for client approvals on Friday afternoons in the summer, and mentally coping with late March snowfall accumulations of one inch or — God forbid — more.

And occasions where the Stalingrad motif applies seem to become more common with every passing day. We find ourselves constantly surrounded by hostile forces with ever dwindling routes of escape. All we did was follow orders by striking out into the world to see what we could conquer. And here we stand, supported by makeshift crutches and blood-stained bandages, with nothing to show for our efforts except frost-bite, a dead comrade's overcoat, and one last remaining bullet. Meanwhile, by the light of their glowing bonfires, we can see the silhouettes of SS officers pinning medals to their own chests while eagerly boarding the only homeward bound plane in town.

I tried explaining my analogy to the other guests but they had long since rolled their eyes at me and moved on. Someone more congenial than I had claimed kinship with the creative spirit of David Bowie, whom everybody loves nowadays, and talk shifted from political and social turmoil to the undemanding topic of popular music. With a sigh of relief, the host went to fetch dessert, a selection of colorfully baroque Petit-four. 'They look like something Ziggy Stardust might wear,' I said, eliciting laughter and precipitating my reentry into polite society. 

Cakes, fine wine and convivial company in a comfortable home. Who was I kidding? In truth, I was clearly a million miles away from any equivalent of trench warfare in a freezing Hell on the Eastern front. Me and my glib hyperbole getting me into trouble again. Nevertheless, the daily grind can still resemble a hopeless stalemate from time to time, and it's difficult to shake the dust of struggle from off your shoulders when you're shell-shocked by the news, even on the weekends.

But at future dinner parties, when asked to nominate persons from the past, I should definitely forgo Stalingrad references and perhaps invoke Buenaventa Durruti instead. Nobody knows who he is, so the other guests will just smile and nod. 'He died on a makeshift operating table at the Ritz in Madrid,' I'll explain. 'While fighting in the Spanish Civil War ... oh, just decaf for me, please, but I will have another slice of flan.'

The Misuses of Literacy

A tiny wooden library on a pole has been erected in the front yard of an apartment building near mine. Neighbors are invited to freely exchange books they have finished reading for ones they want to read. It looks much like a fancy bird house but is fitted with shelves for around thirty or forty paperbacks instead of space for seeds and nesting straw. Confused and disappointed pigeons can be seen perching on the roof, and not because those eager, covetous sparrows have already nabbed the new releases. 

But I also rarely discover anything of interest in this so-called library. The inventory is mostly dog-eared science fiction, obsolete computer manuals, bestsellers with mysterious stains and cracked spines, and lots of out-of-date travel guides to Europe and the Caribbean. I once even came across an antediluvian edition of Fodor's Italy with hotel prices listed in Lira. Maybe useful reference material for time travelers but of little practical value to anyone else.

In other words, rather than an altruistic initiative for promoting local literacy, the library is really just a convenient depository for people who would otherwise feel guilty about tossing old books into the garbage. As such, I suppose it does provide a worthwhile service for the community, although the custodian should probably discard that copy of The South Beach Diet that's been available for so long its pages are starting to grow mold. 

This morning, however, I noticed a new sign on the library's facade asking patrons to refrain from leaving "religious books," and remembered seeing an illustrated children's Bible there earlier in the week. No doubt that was the offending article, immediately removed before any impressionable minds could be exposed to its devious message. Ah, the hard-nosed, petulant prejudices of the modern world where multiple copies of Fifty Shades of Grey  can find a home but the "light of the world" must be extinguished.

Fire Fighter

Frank was clicking mournfully on all the folders on his computer screen like the victim of a house fire, sifting through the smoldering debris of their burned-out home, searching for something, however small, they might salvage from the charcoal ruins.

Penny for your thoughts, Frank, I could have asked him, but remained silent as I knew Frank's thoughts were not worth that much. Indeed, had Frank actually experienced a house fire you might suspect he'd set it himself to collect the insurance money, only to discover afterwards that he'd forgotten to renew his policy. That's how Frank's world turns, juddering and creaking, revolving around a black hole instead of the sun. 

I've often thought there should be a special Zodiac created just for Frank. A horoscope all for himself where he was born under the bad sign of Pyro, the Arsonist. If you gazed into the night sky, Pyro would be constellation raging haphazardly across the cosmos as if lost, crashing dangerously into other stars and flickering on and off at random intervals. The music of the spheres played too fast on an out of tune ukulele.

After several minutes of desultory clicking, Frank shoved his keyboard and mouse aside with a great deal of irritation, turning his back on his entire computer, evidently having failed to exhume whatever crucial data he had hoped was buried in its memory banks. Frank looked, not for the first time, like a dim-witted deadbeat who had believed "my ass is covered" but suddenly found that ass publicly unveiled in all its guilty, quivering, pockmarked horror.

How, I wondered, would Frank try to explain away  the important information he had lost yet again; the files he had apparently not backed-up or foolishly deleted by mistake yet again? This was surely an error too far, his final chance wasted, and Frank's manager was already practicing that "we'll have to let you go" speech. Frank was about to get fired and his career at our company reduced to ashes.

But no doubt the long-suffering phoenix of his job prospects would rise once more from the flames of another termination. Fortunately some kind-hearted but professionally irresponsible person would write him a good reference. And I've nearly finished the first draft. 

Forty Years Before The Mast

I was standing on the dock at sunrise, staring at an empty horizon with other frustrated commuters. We were waiting for the SS Office Block, our local ferry, which was at least half-an-hour late. Meanwhile, three empty Marie Celestes sailed past in the opposite direction. Typical. You can blame the trade winds but I think it's just poor scheduling.

This particular morning, a rerouted Raft of the Medusa came rolling by as well. "Is this the right mooring for Human Resources?" one of the haggard, delirious mariners from the raft yelled.

"No, you're going about fifteen nautical miles off-course." I yelled back. "You need to catch the The Flying Dutchman, eastbound," But I don't think he heard me above the sound of crashing waves and the inconsolable wailing of those who were late for work. 

I glanced back towards the horizon. Still no sign of the ferry so my boss would be furious with me again. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth getting out of bed and putting on my sailor suit and life jacket. Surely it makes more sense to work from a safe berth at home than spend hours lost at sea, bailing water aboard an overcrowded and unreliable commuter ark. It's all hands on deck every day. 

Unfortunately I don't have that luxury. Press-ganged into clerical service since my teens, I'm still barely clinging to the rigging rather than studying maps and charts in the Captain's cabin. I've never been offered a squint through the Admiral's spyglass or found myself celebrated with a twenty-one gun salute either. 

So here I am, singing shanties out of tune and carving third-rate scrimshaw as I wait on the dock with my fellow old salts. But I suppose it's either this or Davy Jones' Locker until I finally hear my financial adviser shout "Land ahoy!" and I can hopefully afford to retire like a rat deserting a sinking ship.

Carpohydrates

Unwinding beside the pond, I spent my lunch hour watching greedy fish attempt to devour the discarded remains of a hot-pressed panino. A study in failure since they were unable to swallow a single mouthful of the waterlogged crust, despite taking turns to attack it from diverse angles.

I felt some degree of empathy for the defeated fish as I, too, had experienced a morning of futile endeavor. Bottom-feeders such as us are repeatedly lured to the surface by tantalizing prizes we are ultimately denied for one reason or another.

Eventually the fish abandoned the delectable but inedible hunk of bread, disappearing with a flash of silvery indignation into the murky depths where they could eye-up less appetizing but bite-size grubs and algae no bigger than their bellies. But I had to return to my office and continue hunting non-existent truffles, out-of-season, in a barren field with the wrong sort of dog. Which is what work feels like much of the time.

As I recall, Jesus did not suggest we pay heed to the fish in his speech about considering the lilies and the sparrows. How very wise of him. After all, fish are often being caught and eaten in the New Testament, therefore not setting a particularly good example for humankind.

Indeed. For all my envy of their abrupt vanishing act, they were stunted fish doomed to circumnavigate the same changeless, negligible expanse of stagnant water day after day, Whereas, at five in the afternoon I could at least emerge from my pond for an evening's respite from daly failure and ennui, however brief.

Although we are both bottom feeders, the fish and I, thankfully their bottom is much lower than mine. Hooray for evolution, the formation of legs, and the ability to breathe on land. Feeling much better after these thoughts, I finished munching on my sardine sandwich and slowly strolled back to the office.

Royal Flush

During recent, very minor renovations, one of our office bathrooms was not only equipped with a selection of fragrant hand soaps and an inexhaustible supply of extra-strength air fresheners but was also renamed Executive Washroom. A prominent sign bearing this new hierarchical designation was even been screwed into the door, which is now permanently locked and the location of its concealed key only vouchsafed to so-called executives via an email subsequently forwarded to all other employees.

So the only reason for upgrading this particular bathroom, situated near the elevator, appears to be to discourage couriers and delivery men from taking advantage of our facilities. Such intruders are often accused of blocking the toilet and using too many paper towels which they leave scattered all over the floor instead of depositing in the receptacle provided. Although I sympathize with the people who consequently have to clean up the mess, I do believe prohibiting universal access to a means of bowel and bladder relief is callous and cruel; not a million miles away, in fact, from the work of demons, trolls and dungeon-masters. After all, when you have to go you have to go and not being able to go is an exquisitely agonizing torture we have all experienced.

Alas, my protests on behalf the mailman with interstitial cystitis, the UPS guy taking a diuretic, and the IBS impacted bike messenger were noted but ignored by what I currently refer to as the Water Closet Comintern. Rendered thus powerless, my only recourse was to post my own makeshift, satirical sign above the toilet roll holder: Executive Wiping Station. It's still in place three weeks later so I'm thinking of planting another. Something along the lines of Apply To Chief Executive Officer In Person For Permission To Use Plunger.

Box Fresh

Surveying a cardboard Stonehenge of weekly meal kits and farm-to-table subscription boxes delivered to my neighbor's porch, I wondered whether mail-order food supplies were symptoms of a neurotic need to avoid supermarkets brought on by still virulent acute Covid anxiety, or simply a convenient way of stocking the pantry for someone who "doesn't have time to shop." However, as I've never actually met and never even see my neighbor I was unable to come to any conclusion. 

Later, rummaging through my refrigerator in search of random vegetables to roast on a pan with the remains of a rotisserie chicken, I decided that my neighbor's mail-order food delivery lifestyle, this plug-and-play cuisine of his, was some new-fangled form of conspicuous consumption that, rather than exhibiting the fruits of his personal wealth, demonstrated his successful navigation of and complete immersion in the high-speed world of modern interconnectivity. It's as if he was hanging a flag from his porch that displayed a QR Code instead of Old Glory; or planting a flower bed in his front yard that resembles the face of Elon Musk when in full bloom.

What next? Will he put his home on the market with a price listed in cryptocurrency? Perhaps he will the demolish the house altogether and rebuild with an architectural design more redolent of Silicon Valley. I'm pretty sure he's already installing a charging station for an electric car in his driveway. No doubt he will soon cancel all those mail order food delivery subscriptions, subsisting entirely on full-flavor nutrition pills and protein capsules instead, dining in a Virtual Reality Michelin-starred restaurant generated from the comfort of his own bedroom.

Thus will my neighbor be self-condemned to the pre-planned solitary confinement of technological dependence, never to know the joy of dragging six bags of heavy groceries back from the market and only then realizing he forgot the shallots his wife told him she needed for a recipe. But who knows? Perhaps one day he will emerge from his Internet dungeon and, not unlike the proverbial neighbor of yore who asks to borrow a cup of sugar, will ask to borrow a portion of my WiFi bandwidth because his WiFi is down which means he can't tell the oven to turn itself on.

Salvator Daily

I enjoy drinking German beer during the winter months. Monk-brewed, face-slapping, lederhosen-staining, oompah-farting doppelbock. Imagine a Bavarian burgermeister with a barrel all to himself, sitting in front of his roaring fire, dreaming of pigtailed milkmaids while waiting for the April thaw, only stirring from his reveries to carve another side of spit-roasted wild boar.

Well, that's not exactly how I celebrate beer o'clock in modern Boston, but it's as near as damn it bearing in mind that I wield no executive power over my fellow townspeople and an entire wild boar is prohibitively expensive these days, never mind rental of the spit-roasting equipment. So I'm confined to merely ordering the dog around and tearing strips off a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. I also have central heating, which is far more convenient than a roaring fire although obviously not as picturesque. Still, after three or four doppelbock Salvators in my pewter stein, I soon forget about these minor deviations from the Deutsch ideal.

Come early Spring, however, my malted fantasies turn their attention to traditional English pale ale. A similar copper color but not as strong or heavy on the stomach as its German cousin. 'Hail fellow well met.' Imagine the local squire in his tricorn hat and cloak, toasting lambing season with a pork pie and an overflowing tankard. Both dandy and rake, he occupies my favorite armchair until October when the Burgermeister reappears. Because I'm not drinking any of that yellowy lager they sell in the summer. The beach bum in flip flops is not a role I wish to play even if his beer is cold and refreshing on a boiling hot day.

Double Bogey

At work, my brain is required to be like a bag of golf clubs because it is the eleventh hour on the eighteenth hole. I need a driver for teeing-off difficult discussions in the conference room; that request for more project funding needs to fly down the fairway as if it were an intercontinental ballistic missile. Some sort of sand-wedge will be useful when nefarious colleagues try to trap me in their Powerpoint bunkers.  A nine-iron will come in usual for hitting out of the rough when the debate gets heated and my strategy is called into question. And I will very definitely need a simple putter for explaining obvious concepts to stupid people.

The putter is, of course, the club I use the most. Hold this flag, idiot, while I attempt to tap this little ball of information into your tiny hole of a mind. Its five o'clock in the afternoon and I'm already well over par talking with the account manager. I invest in new clubs when I can but he's happy with a rusty old set picked them up for a song at someone's garage sale. Maybe I should walk off the course and just head to the clubhouse? Drown my sorrows in cognac and memories of the halcyon days of razor-creased plus-fours and Argyle sweater vests. Back then, we wore our smart Gatsby caps at a jaunty angle. Now it's logo-emblazoned polyester visors pulled over our furrowed brows.

The other solution is to give up golf altogether and play and different game. One that demands less walking and fewer clubs. Darts, for instance. I only need three darts to throw at the treble twenty and I can drink while I'm throwing them. In fact, I'm told drinking is an integral part of darts and, like billiards, the more you drink the better you play. Now that's what I regard as a good benefits package.