American Fez

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.