Electronic magnification and sub-nano images
record a universe is inside a universe that puts our world to shame.
At the age of twelve, my friends and I stole
fish and powdered food from the Lower East Side. Universal corruption still stares out at me
in the beautiful aquarium we see in the doctor’s office. Each long strand of excreta extended from a
neon tetra or an angel fish proclaims my guilt.
At night in a subterranean car-park there is
a sense of mystery, as when a hero descends into the labyrinth in search of a
monstrous bull. The greater mystery is
where to find an empty space not reserved for businessmen. Even more, the myth unwinds, the struggle to
re-ascend and pay the gatekeeper’s fee.
Without a clue, the nightmare of entrapment continues into the break of
dawn. No one any longer understands or
appreciates this great predicament.
An old judge slumped down in his chair nearly
touching the floor. While his eyes,
darkened to this world, were like twin black beacons projecting more wisdom and
experience than a newly-formed star a moment after creation.
Nine kinds
of anxiety test the mettle of your mind
§ The first, of course, is
fearfulness of not being able to complete the list at all or in time to present
your worries to your anxious self.
§ The second is that your pen runs
out of ink just as the most incisive pains manifest themselves.
§ The third comes up like a howling
gust of wind to warn you never to let loose your fingers lest the list be torn
away as soon as you have written down the final insight.
§ The fourth, though seeming
trivial and without a point, comes out of fear that, having drawn up your bill
of complaints and neatly folded it away in a protected place, a better ideas
comes to mind and it invalidates everything that came before.
§ The fifth, well, it hardly bears
consideration now, having come so far already, but keep this close to your
heart, just in case: there may be no one finally who can read your handwriting
or, if they can, cares enough to read the plaguy bill.
§ The sixth is simple: your list is
found, deciphered, discussed, and then dismissed as madness.
§ The seventh anxiety reaches out
in the darkness of a quiet dreamless sleep to ask you why you need to catalogue
your worries and you have no ready reply.
§ The eighth, alas, I am ashamed to
say, is that you realize your anger at the world for its indifference has
dissipated and times winged chariot no longer follows you.
§ Thus you have no one to blame but
yourself, and yet you no longer care.
One longs for the blizzards of one’s youth
when the snow piled so high it was often over your head. Now it is only worries.
Last year I met many interesting people whose
names I have forgotten. This year I met
them again and still do not know who they are.A Sackfulm of Somber Sayings No. 2
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